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MOSCOW, April 29 / TASS /. Kiev blocked Russia’s proposals to put in place real mechanisms to prevent ceasefire violations at Wednesday’s meeting of the Contact Group for Peace in Eastern Ukraine, said the Russian plenipotentiary representative of the Boris Gryzlov group to the press after the meeting.
“Instead of discussing substantive issues, everything was aimed at building convoluted ‘legal structures’ so as not to recognize Donbass as a party to the conflict,†he noted. “In fact, in the interest of respecting the invented red lines, which go against the Minsk agreements, Kiev is sacrificing the safety and the lives of the people of south-eastern Ukraine.”
According to Gryzlov, the meeting “once again confirmed that despite political statements on the pursuit of peace, the current Ukrainian authorities are demonstrating their inability to take practical steps to observe the ceasefire in order to appease the few radical political forces “.
“In this situation, it is hardly possible to expect Ukraine to be constructive in tackling much more thorny political issues to resolve the conflict,” he concluded.
Among the key issues of Wednesday’s meeting was a draft coordination mechanism needed to implement the ceasefire that was agreed to last summer. Dmitri Kozak, deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff, told reporters last week that the agreements signed on July 22, 2020 approved additional ceasefire measures, with its key element being cooperation between the parties to the conflict within the Joint Center for the Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire. (JCCC).
According to Kozak, representatives of the Ukrainian armed forces and the Donbass militia should interact directly to quickly respond to ceasefire violations, verify them and effectively prevent escalation of fire. Kozak stressed that Ukraine had signed these agreements but was doing everything possible to avoid their practical implementation.
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