KIEV, October 17. /TASS/. The law on a special status for regions in eastern Ukraine is only a formality, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Friday.

“These are only intentions, only vain wishes in the form that it has been signed,” he said.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a law on a special status for Donbass on Thursday, October 16.

The document is stipulated by agreements reached in the Belarusian capital Minsk in early September. The special status is granted for three years.

In September the Ukrainian parliament passed a law granting a special self-rule status for certain districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. A total of 277 lawmakers in the 450-member parliament voted in favor of the legislation, proposed by President Poroshenko. The required minimum of votes to pass a law in Ukraine is 226.

In order to ensure public order in several areas, people’s police detachments are created under a decision of local self-government authorities.

In these areas early local elections should be held on December 7, 2014. The law will enter into force on the day of its publication.

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.