NEW YORK, May 09. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine’s incumbent authorities have no plans to renounce the punitive operation in the Southeast of the country, the chief spokesman for the regime, acting foreign minister Andrei Deshchytsia said Thursday in an interview with the CNN.
He claimed the operation, which had caused dozens of deaths among the residents of the Southeastern regions, had been suspended for several days for a variety of reasons, including actions in line with the April 17 Geneva accords and in the efforts to free a group of military observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
He gave the assurances, however, that it would continue.
Deshchytsia said he thought that the Ukrainian government and law enforcement agencies should act more resolutely.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a telephone conversation with the U.S. Secretary of State, John Kerry, earlier in the day that it was important for the Kiev regime to stop the punitive operation as soon as possible, to lift the blockade of all the population centers in the Southeast, to release all the political prisoners, and to launch a comprehensive constitutional reform.
“Lavrov voiced a deep concern over the negative reaction of the Kiev authorities to the results of the Russian-Swiss negotiations and their refusal to stop using the Armed Forces and the units of nationalistic radicals against the protesters in the Southeast,” the ministry said.