MINSK, September 2. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s decision to recall his country’s delegation from the Contact Group actually put an end to the negotiating process and killed the possibility of settling the conflict at the negotiating table, Russia’s chief negotiator in the Contact Group and Ambassador to Belarus, Boris Gryzlov, told TASS on Friday.
"By his statement and decree, Zelensky actually not only scuttled the negotiating process but also closed the window of possibilities for settling the conflict at the negotiating table, preferring a war to diplomacy," he said.
He recalled that over the past eight years Kiev "has been clumsily maneuvering and exercising verbal casuistry, dodging, twisting facts and openly lying when it was calling on international organizations and appealing to international law." "It has been refusing from the existing agreements, dodging their implementation, seeking to win over ‘convenient’ and loyal guarantors in the persons of the French and German leaders, who have long lost even ‘pseudo-neutrality’ and now, under the United States’ guidance, are openly Russphobic and pro-Nazi, supporting and arming the anti-popular Kiev regime," he said.
"It was impossible to reach any agreement with these authorities not only because they are incapable of doing it but also because Kiev has completely lost state sovereignty and is incapable of demonstrating political will and making independent decisions," Gryzlov stressed. "Obviously, this demonstrative step was taken by the Zelensky team on orders from outside - from the decision-making centers located for from the Ukrainian capital."
According to Gryzlov, Russia has nothing to agree on with such ‘negotiators." The Ukrainian delegation, in his words, was abundant in "open hawks, nationalists and political adventurists, from Kravchuk, Demchenko and Gerashchenko to Reznikov and Arestovich, who were wriggling, temporizing, evading concrete solutions when people were dying in Donbass, infrastructure was being destroyed and genocide continued."
He stressed that negotiations with Ukraine will be possible when necessary conditions are created for that. "When the goals of the special military operation are attained, and they will be attained in any event, regardless of any Zelensky’s and his satellites’ steps," he added.
In general, this decision is a strange step, which can have influence on the Russian-Ukrainian relations and the general situation, he noted.
On Thursday, Zelensky officially disbanded the Ukrainian delegation to the Contact Group seeking peace for eastern Ukraine. The corresponding decree was posted on the presidential website.
Thursday’s decree abolished six presidential decrees of 2020-2021 on the work of the Ukrainian delegation at the Contact Group and the delegation’s composition. The decree entered into effect on the day of its publication.
Thanks to the Contact Group consisting of representatives of Russia, the OSCE and Ukraine, negotiations were held at various levels in the Normandy Four group (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France). As a result, agreements on the roadmap for a peace settlement and ceasefire in Donbass (known as the Minsk accords) were sealed in September 2014 and February 2015.
A significant provision of the agreements was the requirement that Ukraine carry out reforms on decentralization, including a law on the special status of certain areas in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions within the country. Under the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, the special status of Donbass provided, in particular, for the right to linguistic self-determination for residents of the region, the establishment of a people’s militia, and an amnesty for all participants in the armed conflict. The Minsk accords, which were endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution, are binding.
Nevertheless, the negotiating process actually stalled due to Kiev’s refusal to implement "the political provisions" of the Minsk peace deal. Kiev deliberately dragged out the talks at the Contact Group under President Pyotr Poroshenko (who was in office in 2014-2919) and then after Vladimir Zelensky took office in 2019. In particular, Kiev was reluctant to build any direct dialogue with the DPR and LPR and enshrine the region’s special status in the constitution, but demanded its control over Donbass’ border with Russia. However, in accordance with the Package of Measures, the handover procedure was supposed to begin only after local elections take place in the region.