KIEV, December 29. /TASS. Ukraine will never agree to revise the Minsk agreements, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday, December 29.
The talks on Ukrainian settlements in the Minsk format should be continued, Poroshenko said.
Ceasefire in eastern Ukraine
The Contact Group on Ukraine met in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk on December 24. The meeting featured former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, plenipotentiary envoys of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics — Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deinego, OSCE envoy to Ukraine Heidi Tagliavini and Russian Ambassador in Kiev Mikhail Zurabov.
The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on the ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners during the OSCE-mediated talks on September 5 in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk. The ceasefire took effect on the same day, but reports said it has occasionally been violated.
On September 20 in Minsk, the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine featuring representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE adopted a memorandum outlining parameters for implementation of commitments on ceasefire in Ukraine fixed in the Minsk Protocol of September 5. The document contains nine items, including in particular a ban on use of all armaments and withdrawal of weapons of over 100 millimeters caliber to a distance of 15 kilometers from the contact line on either side. The OSCE was tasked with controlling implementation of the memorandum’s provisions.
In order to implement the Minsk agreements, the conflicting parties declared the “silence regime” in Donbas on December 9. Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics stressed the need to withdraw heavy weaponry, to carry out prisoner swaps and to demilitarize the region.