MOCSOW, December 19. /TASS/. The US continues working with the Ukrainian authorities calling on them to fulfil the Minsk agreements, and the Ukrainian politicians hear the calls, the US Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview with anchorman of the Vesti on Saturday programme on Rossiya 1 television channel.
"We will continue to push the government in Kyiv for certain, and they have obligations and they need to live up to their obligations," he said.
The secretary of state expressed confidence the Ukrainian authorities listen to the US calls.
"They have done considerable things politically. They passed a very difficult law in the Rada. It was a very difficult law," he said commenting on amendments to the constitution, which referred to de-centralisation of Ukraine. "It may not satisfy everybody, but it was very hard to get that passed, and I can tell you that we have people, including my assistant secretary of state, who was working in the halls of the Rada to help corral the votes to make it happen."
In mid-July, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt attended a session at Ukraine’s parliament (Vekhovna Rada), during which the deputies were supposed to send to the country’s constitution court draft amendments to the constitution. After that visit, many deputies claimed unprecedented pressure from the West.
The draft amendments passed the first reading, but the version was unacceptable for the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics, which said those amendments had not been approved by their representatives, thus violating the Minsk accords.