KIEV, October 10. /TASS/. Ukraine will lose the Minsk format of settling the conflict in Donbass if it fails to adopt a law on Donbass special status on the basis of the Steinmeier formula by next year, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky told reporters during the press marathon on Thursday.

"If we do not adopt a new law on special status [of Donbass] and if we do not implement the Steinmeier formula, we will have to withdraw from the Minsk process. This will happen automatically then," Zelensky said.

"Moreover, we have to consider that the other side may say, 'Ukraine does not want to implement what it signed'," he added. "And then we may be left one-on-one with Russia," he noted.

In the framework of the Minsk process, a constitutional reform is supposed to be implemented in Ukraine in order to grant Donbass a special status on a permanent basis. However, the proposed amendments to the constitution have still not been approved by the parliament. Kiev earlier agreed to implement the Steinmeier formula as a mechanism for including the special status of Donbass into Ukrainian legislation.