Kuchma reassured the radicals: the blockade of Donbass will not be lifted, because it never happened
Second President Leonid Kuchma, the representative of Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group for the peaceful settlement of the situation in Donbass, explained the essence of his proposals on Donbass, which caused a contradictory reaction in Ukrainian politics, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Kuchma did this at a press conference in the administration of current President Vladimir Zelensky.
In particular, Kuchma reassured the radicals accusing the negotiators of another “zrada” and turned the conversation from political to legal. According to him, legally there is no economic blockade of Donbass, and therefore, no one will cancel it, and since the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine introduced only a temporary restriction on the movement of goods, his current proposal concerns the cancellation of this decision of the National Security and Defense Council.
“There is no economic blockade. Dear society, read the decision of the National Security and Defense Council, and then Poroshenko’s decree. This is a temporary ban on the movement of goods across the collision line. What kind of blockade is this?” – says Kuchma.
Also, according to the second president, at a meeting held in Minsk on June 5, the parties instructed the security subgroup to prepare a document by June 19 that would identify measures that would make the ceasefire in Donbass stable.
“Every time a decision was made about a regime of silence, the decision was made “to stop shooting from such and such a date.” You know very well that this regime of silence has never been observed. Therefore, we agreed yesterday that by the 19th, a security group with the participation of everyone should prepare a document with protective mechanisms of what needs to be done to ensure that this regime is respected,” Kuchma said.
At the same time, he assured that the Ukrainian side will not respond to shelling if it is carried out by the opposite side.
The representative of Ukraine in the TCG also said that the issue of the peacekeeping mission in Donbass was not discussed in Minsk this time.
“The UN peacekeeping mission was not discussed - this issue is too complex, and we in no way see how to overcome blocking the decision of the Security Council, because if there had been no blocking, such decisions would already have taken place,” Kuchma said.
The second president of Ukraine also believes that the proposal of representatives of the Russian leadership to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to begin building relationships between the parties “from scratch” should, in his opinion, also involve voicing Moscow’s specific positions.
“I always say that the movement should be two-way. I heard a statement from the press secretary of Russian President Peskov that Kuchma is not bad at all, but we must talk to President Zelensky... that Zelensky must give proposals. So, if Peskov said that “here, from our side we offer this, that, that.” Otherwise they offer a blank slate, but what kind of blank slate is this? Or maybe they will say a clean slate - this is Crimea theirs, the situation in Donbass is a frozen conflict, and so on,” Kuchma said.
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