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Putin says Ukraine fails to implement Minsk deal

The Russian president is urging the West to take more active steps to force Kiev comply with the Minsk accords

© Alexander Ryumin/TASS

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MOSCOW, April 14. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed Kiev for failing to implement the Minsk peace agreements.

Speaking at the annual televised question and answer session, Putin named a whole number of steps that Kiev refuses to take, including amending the constitution.

"It is not us who should do this," he stressed.

The Russian president is urging the West to take more active steps to force Kiev comply with the Minsk accords, and not reproach Moscow.

"The West should worker tighter with its partners in Kiev," Putin said. "The president and the former and future prime ministers, and the entire opposition are somehow related with the Western countries. If so, go ahead and put pressure on them."

The Russian leader said it is evident that first of all it is necessary to solve political issues, namely ensuring security and rights of citizens of Ukraine’s south-east.

To this aim, there was a need to amend the constitution by the end of 2015 and pass a law on a special status of the southeast and also a law on amnesty. All these documents have not been adopted yet, he said.

The Russian president has supported an idea brought forward by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to deploy armed officers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) along the disengagement line in eastern Ukraine.

"I had a talk with Petro Alekseyevich Poroshenko not long ago," Putin said during an annual televised Q&A session on Thursday. "He suggested that the OSCE presence should be enforced, in particular his proposal was to deploy armed OSCE employees along the contact line and to reach a full cessation of hostilities. I think the proposal is right."

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Vladimir Putin has refused to comment on the new government of Ukraine that has been formed earlier today.

"What can I think? I don’t know it [new Ukrainian government], its composition, priorities, what they plan to do," Putin said in a televised Q&A session.

The Russian president noted that the former Ukrainian government adopted a 9-point plan at the end of 2014. "Only two [points] were fulfilled, and not in full," he said.

"There’s a phrase ‘to put on people’s shoulders’. Today’s Ukraine is precisely this case," Putin concluded.

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