VIENNA, December 17./TASS/. This year has come for Ukraine as yet another year of missed opportunities for the settlement in Donbass and the settlement of the problems inherited from ‘Maidan’, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich told an online session of the Permanent Council of the European security agency on Thursday.
The Russian diplomat emphasized that the end of December will mark two years since Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky voiced his political ambitions. "He pledged that he was seeking to shortly achieve the end to the conflict in the east of Ukraine, and to help making the lives of the majority of the country’s nationals qualitatively better," he said.
"This prompted many people to associate their hopes for the improvement of the situation with the promised changes. However, we have to state with regret that the outgoing year 2020 has become for Ukraine yet another year of missed opportunities in the settlement of long-standing problems inherited from the post-Maidan authorities," Lukashevich said.
Focusing on the situation in the east of Ukraine, the Russian envoy pointed out that the policy of Ukrainian authorities has not changed apart from certain half-measures that eased tensions a little bit. "Speculations about a bid to ‘reach out to the minds and hearts of the Donbass population’ have failed to be translated into concrete legislative and practical moves aimed at an early implementation of the commitments within the Minsk Package of Measures of February 12, 2015. An infamous social and economic blockade of the region continues, hitting mostly the least socially protected layers of the population. Ukrainian authorities have taken no action to lift it even amid the pandemic," Lukashevich noted.
According to the Russian envoy, throughout the year, Kiev has been engaged in an active campaign to discredit a number of provisions in the key instrument for the settlement - the Package of Measures approved in Resolution 2202 of the UN Security Council and recognized by the global community as the basis for achieving peace in Donbass that has no alternative. "Ukrainian representatives have gradually passed on to direct appeals to rewrite the document from speeches about an alleged necessity to ‘update’ it," Lukashevich stressed.
"Kiev has done absolutely nothing in the outgoing year for the settlement of political aspects, except for an imitation of progress," he went on to say. The only thing that the Ukrainian parliament was capable of doing, was to formally extend the law on a special status for Donbass for another year. "Only one amendment was made to its text on December 15, replacing 2020 with 2021," he stressed.
Meanwhile, Ukraine continues glorification of Nazi allies from Ukrainian nationalist groups of the WWII times, and ‘memorable dates’ connected with them are marked officially, he added. Thus, on December 16, Verkhovna Rada passed a resolution approving the respective schedule for 2021.
"It is noteworthy that at a plenary meeting of the 75th session of the UN General Assembly on the same day, Ukraine together with the US, voted like in the previous years against the resolution on combatting the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to the escalation of the modern forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance," the Russian envoy summed up.