KIEV, September 16. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko said Tuesday that the law on a special status for certain districts of Donbass /the embattled Donetsk and Lugansk regions seeking independence from Ukraine/, adopted by the Ukrainian parliament Tuesday, should underlie regional peace.

“We prevented a very fragile truce from being destroyed and prevented Ukraine from being drawn into a war. Today we are nearing the moment when people in the east stop being killed. This is the key thing,” the presidential press service quoted Poroshenko as saying.

The Ukrainian leader also recalled that decentralization and greater powers to regions were and are the key points of a peace plan.

The Verkhovna Rada passed a law on Tuesday granting a special self-rule status for certain districts in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. The text of the document was published on the Ukrainian parliament’s website. The special status for Donbass is designed for three years, Poroshenko said.

The special status law was stipulated by the Minsk agreements reached in early September in the Belarusian capital on the basis of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s seven-point plan proposed two days before.

Over the three years, Poroshenko said, the Ukrainian authorities “will be able to implement issues of deep decentralization, which should also be a subject for making relevant amendments to the Constitution.” Elections to local self-rule bodies in Donbass are set for December 7.

Clashes between Kiev's troops and local militias in the southeast Ukrainian Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Luрansk People’s republics (DPR and LPR) have killed some 3,000 people, according to UN data.

The parties to the conflict agreed on cessation of fire during talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe /OSCE/ in Minsk on September 5. The long hoped-for ceasefire took effect the same day.