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Contact Group’s on Ukraine political subgroup to discuss Minsk Accords

On the agenda are the roadmap, inadmissibility of persecution of participants in Donbass events and elections

DONETSK, August 2. /TASS/. The Contact Group’s political subgroup will discuss the roadmap of implementing the Minsk Agreements, amnesty of participants in Donbass conflict and election modalities on August 3 in Minsk, acting foreign minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Natalya Nikonorova said on Tuesday.

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"On the agenda are the roadmap, inadmissibility of persecution of participants in Donbass events and election modality. Last week we received a direct request from the Contact Group to clearly state and prepare for initialing all points on which consensus was reached. There are not a lot of them," Donetsk News Agency quoted Nikonorova as saying. Kiev was supposed to present its position on those matters by July 29 through its coordinator but failed to do so, she added.

The acting foreign minister expressed hope that Ukraine’s representatives will not reject the already coordinated matters at the upcoming meeting. "We are concerned by the lack of Kiev’s position and limited mandate of its negotiators. If the situation on the diplomatic track is further prolonged, we fear military escalation. Shellings of our territories have intensified lately," she said.

She noted that the petition signed by Donbass residents on Kiev’s non-implementation of the Minsk Agreements will be handed to OSCE Special Representative Martin Sajdik at the Contact Group’s meeting on August 3. "We hope that these signatures - and there are more than 300,000 of them - will make not only Kiev, but also the leaders of guarantor countries think," she concluded.

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