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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Kiev’s refusal to amnesty Donbas leaders shows reluctance to implement Minsk deal — DPR

Ukrainian media cited Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin as saying that amnesty agreed at the latest Minsk peace talks would not be applicable to the leaders of Donbas militia

© Nikolai Muravyev/TASS

MOSCOW, February 13. /TASS/. Kiev’s refusal to amnesty militia leaders of south-eastern Ukraine means its reluctance to implement the Minsk agreement, Andrey Purgin, the speaker of the People’s Assembly (parliament) of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said on Friday.

"As a matter of fact, they are saying they are not going to implement the law on amnesty," he said.

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Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian media cited Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin as saying that amnesty agreed at the latest Minsk peace talks would not be applicable to the leaders of Donbas militia.

Purgin said the Kiev authorities were absorbed in forming the class of political prisoners. "Ukraine is forming an entire class of political prisoners. It is nothing but a witch hunt," he told the Donetsk News Agency. "Yesterday, I spoke with a relative of one of the political prisoners from Poltava. This man is now kept in custody for a pro-Russian picket. And he is being tried by a panel of three Poltava judges. This is persecution of dissidents. This is collapse of society."

"Tens of thousands of criminal cases, thousands of people kept at detention wards. And I would like to stress one thing. When we had the latest mass exchange of prisoners, we released people who had come here to shoot at us, but among the 220 people released by the Ukrainian side only 34 had been self-defence fighters. It means that the rest of these people were political prisoners," Purgin noted.

Among the measures geared towards the implementation of the Minsk agreements are pardoning and amnesty through a law banning to persecute and punish citizens over Donbas developments.

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Eastern Ukraine

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