BERLIN, October 7./TASS/. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has expressed surprise over criticism in Ukraine of the so-called ’Steinmeier formula’, which is a mechanism for granting a special status to Donbass stipulated by the Minsk agreements, DPA reports.
According to the news agency, during his official visit to Tbilisi Steinmeier came out against allegations that Russia was trying to manipulate the wording of his ‘formula’. The situation was practically in an impasse at talks in the Normandy Format in Paris three years ago, he reiterated.
"That is why, this formula is nothing else but an attempt to make several small steps out of the big steps that both sides in the conflict had declined," the news agency quoted him as saying. However, the succession of these moves and their context were to be discussed at talks, he stressed.
"Discussion in Ukraine surprises me a bit only because the former president was one of the participants [in the negotiations]," the president noted.
Protests against the "Steinmeier Formula" that Kiev’s representatives approved at a meeting in Minsk on October 1 have been seen across Ukraine. Protest rallies took place in downtown Kiev on October 1 and 2. On Sunday, October 6, about 3,000 people protested against the formula in Kiev’s central Independence Square.
Nationalists demand that Foreign Minister Vadim Pristaiko and Kiev’s Envoy to the Contact Group on resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine Leonid Kuchma step down " and a criminal investigation be opened into them "if the document is signed on Russia’s terms".
In his video address on October 3, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky urged the Ukrainian people not to fall for provocations in connection with the approval of the "Steinmeier formula". There is no capitulation, no surrendering of national interests in this document, he stressed. He also said the Donbass election should take place "not at gunpoint, but in line with the Ukrainian law" and "with the border controlled by the Ukrainian border guards".
Meanwhile, Moscow reiterates a need to consistently comply with the Minsk agreements, which say that Kiev gets control of the state border only after the local elections in Donbass, and after certain areas of the region get a special status.
Steinmeier formula
In late 2015, then German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier put forward a plan that later became known as the "Steinmeier Formula." The plan stipulates that special status be granted to Donbass in accordance with the Minsk Agreements. In particular, the document envisages that Ukraine’s special law on local self-governance will take effect in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions on a temporary basis on the day of local elections, becoming permanent after the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) issues a report on the vote’s results.