MOSCOW, October 19. /TASS/. Russia wanted peace in Donbass and viewed the Minsk accords as a compromise necessary to achieve it, Rodion Miroshnik, head of the Lugansk People's Republic’s representative office in Moscow, said in an interview with TASS.
"Russia clearly wanted [peace]. Agreements are always a compromise anyways, and Russia viewed them as a compromise. It was a way to cool down all military actions and then to try to deal with the rights, obligations, the protection of language, people, and their rights, building cross-border cooperation and so on. This was all enshrined in the Minsk accords," he noted.
Miroshnik recalled that the Minsk agreements were developed without the participation of the Donbass republics at the meetings of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France, Ukraine).
"We were familiarized by then with the results of the agreements, and we made a number of amendments there, which were quite fundamental: ‘in agreement with the republics’. This was a principled point that there must be a subjective, formalized consent of the republics to hold a referendum, to make changes to the constitution, to adopt laws, and to grant amnesty. Our signature should have been there," he emphasized.