MOSCOW, June 8. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been actively undermining the implementation of the Minsk agreements in order to retain the sanctions imposed by the West on Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told journalists on the sidelines of the Primakov Readings forum on Tuesday.
In response to a question about the initiative on moving the meetings of the Contact Group on settling the situation in Donbass from Minsk, the senior diplomat pointed out: "The Russian side views this from a substantive standpoint, if they [Ukraine’s administration] are not ready to implement the Minsk agreements, then the situation won’t change regardless of where the talks on this are conducted."
"The main problem is that to date, Zelensky, his administration, have been sabotaging the implementation of the Minsk agreements exerting every effort, striving to retain the sanctions that the West introduced against Russia," he added.
Earlier, Ukrainian envoy to the Contact Group Leonid Kravchuk stated that Minsk no longer could be a venue for negotiations on the Donbass settlement in light of the ban on Belarusian flights. According to him, Ukraine will address all parties to the negotiations in the Contact Group, above all, the OSCE, with a request to find a new location.