Kiev has basic differences with Russia over Donbass roadmap

KIEV, November 30. /TASS/. Ukraine and Russia cannot come to terms on the provisions of a roadmap for settling the conflict in Donbass, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavel Klimkin said on Tuesday after a meeting of Foreign Ministers of Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine - the countries making up the so-called Normandy Four format.

"The discussion on the logic of the roadmap was brief," Klimkin said. "The Russian side doesn’t agree to the key priorities. We have fundamental differences in our outlooks."

"The discussion was very superficial and it will continue in various other formats," he said.

Klimkin said in part Ukraine was insisting on the access of the staff of the European security organization to the Donbass section of the Ukrainian-Russian border and on the deployment of an OSCE armed mission.

He also admitted that the parties to the talks had not looked into how the future local elections in Donbass could conform to the OSCE standards, in part in what concerned security provisions.

Underlying the plan for peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbass are the accords reached in Minsk in September 2014 and February 2015 that envision a ceasefire, pullback of armaments from the line of contact separating the sides, resumption of economic ties and, on top of that, a profound constitutional reform in Ukraine.

The latter should bring about the decentralization of state power and grant a special status to separate districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

However, the Ukrainian side refuses to fulfill the political clauses of the accords, citing security problems. For instance, it insists on the transfer to it of the Donbass section of the Ukrainian-Russian border although the Minsk accords say in plain terms this should happen only after the elections.

Given this situation, a decision was taken at a yet another meeting of Normandy Four in Berlin on October 19 to draft a roadmap for fulfilling the Minsk accords that would spell out in detail the actions to be taken by the sides, as well as their sequence and the time format.