MOSCOW, April 3. /TASS/. The Kremlin has voiced regret over the fact that the agreements on Donbass have not been implemented to date.
"There are certain agreements that have not been implemented, and this story is not new, one can only voice regret here," Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. "[The agreements have not been implemented] despite the presence of certain circumstances, which exacerbate the situation, in the form of the general coronavirus-related crisis that affects all of us."
At the same time, he declined to comment on reports regarding Kiev’s refusal to abide by the agreement to set up the so-called Advisory Council. "That’s not for us to decide. In this case, the interlocutors of [deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff Dmitry] Kozak are not some third parties but his opposite numbers from Kiev. As for all the rest, that’s not for us to decide," Peskov said when asked whether external pressure on Kiev on the issue was possible.
On April 2, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that Ukraine’s refusal to abide by the Contact Group’s agreements on the Advisory Council negated the emerging positive trends in the Donbass settlement process. The Foreign Ministry noted that Ukraine had abandoned the agreements on Donbass on March 26.
Members of the Contact Group on the settlement in Donbass agreed at a meeting in Minsk on March 11 to set up the so-called Advisory Council as part of the political subgroup. Dmitry Kozak and Ukrainian Presidential Chief of Staff Andrei Yermak took part in the meeting. The council was expected to include ten Ukrainian representatives and ten representatives from the districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which are not controlled by Kiev. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), Russia, Germany and France were supposed to have one representative in the council each. It was planned that the new dialogue platform would be created at a meeting in Minsk on March 26, but that did not happen.