DONETSK, October 31. /TASS/. It is not right to discuss the upcoming elections in Donbass in the absence of representatives from the self-proclaimed republics, acting head of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Denis Pushilin said on Tuesday.
"We simply cannot not have vacuum of power (after the murder of DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko - TASS). We need to ensure the continuity of state governance, so we appointed elections of the republic’s leader and parliament. But the issue of the upcoming elections in Donbass is going to be discussed by the United Nations Security Council without representatives from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republic, which is at least wrong and non-objective," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.
He expressed bafflement that the UN Security Council never initiates its meetings "when civilians in Donbass die in shelling attacks by the Ukrainian armed forces, when Donbass is being stifled by blockades, when Kiev is sparing no effort to break down the Minsk agreement by refusing to pull out forces and weapons and exchange prisoners, by dodging implementation of the political provisions of the Minsk agreements, when agents of the Ukrainian Security Service cowardly killed DPR’s head, Alexander Zakharchenko."
"But, the UN Security Council has decided to discuss the issue of elections in the Donbass republics, which in no way run counter to the Minsk agreements. And this is despite the fact that the Package of Measures on the implementation of the Minsk agreements envisage that only municipal elections should be agreed by the parties whereas no such elections have ever been held either in the DPR or in the LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic) and are not planned as of yet," he stressed.
Pushilin expressed the hope that the UN Security Council would not follow the path of double standards typical of Western countries. "In any case, elections in the Donetsk People’s Republic will he held. They will be transparent, open and will comply with our laws, our constitution and all international norms and standards," he said.
At a United Nations Security Council meeting on Tuesday, diplomats from Western countries refused to give the floor to the chairperson of the LPR’s Central Election Commission Elena Kravchenko.
The decision to hold elections in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics was taken a week after the death of DPR’s head, Alexander Zakharchenko, in a terror attack. Moscow described this decision as a necessary step in such conditions. Russia’s chief negotiator at the Minsk Donbass settlement talks, Boris Gryzlov, noted that the Package of Measures on the implementation of the Minsk agreements regulated only municipal elections in Donbass whereas elections of the heads of the self-proclaimed republics and their parliaments could not be categorized as municipal and for that reason did not contradict the Minsk process in formal terms.