DONETSK, August 26. /TASS/. Kiev's representatives in the Contact Group for a settlement in the east of Ukraine demonstrate their unpreparedness for concrete work on the political settlement track, the foreign minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, Natalya Nikonorova, said on Thursday.
"We state with regret that the although the activity of the political group has been formally resumed after a five-month stalemate, there are still no reasons to call this activity constructive, because the Ukrainian officials prefer to juggle with words, rather than to comply with their obligations under the agreements achieved on the Minsk platform," the DPR Foreign Ministry said in a news release uploaded to its Telegram-channel following Thursday's meeting of the Contact Group.
Nikonorova urged the Ukrainian side to openly discuss a roadmap for achieving peace in Donbass.
"We unconditionally welcome the unblocking of the activity on the political track, but we still lack understanding if the Ukrainian side is going to work in earnest, and not look for excuses for sabotage. For this, Kiev should not send its confidential positions to the OSCE, which merely hinders positive results, but start an open discussion with us regarding the roadmap, because this document is the main subject for discussion in the political group," she said.
On Wednesday, there was the first official meeting of the political subgroup in five months. Kiev's representative agreed to hold the session without public advisers from the Ukrainian side taking part. Earlier, the participation of public experts in the political subgroup's sessions was repeatedly used by Kiev as an excuse for disrupting negotiations, although the Ukrainian side was the first to make them members of its delegation. Kiev's delegates demanded removing from the delegation of the Donetsk People's Republic public expert, journalist Maya Pirogova, convicted by a Ukrainian court in absentia for her activity in DPR organizations. At the same time the Ukrainian side refused to exclude public experts from its own delegation.