Ukrainian Foreign Ministry caught lying about amnesty for Donbass

Ukraine allegedly fulfilled the obligations it assumed in Minsk to adopt an amnesty law, as well as a law to prevent prosecution and punishment of residents of the Donbass republics, but the second law was never signed by the previous government.

Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasily Bodnar stated this during a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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“There are two concepts that we are talking about today: preventing the prosecution and punishment of persons participating in the events in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in 2014, as written in the Minsk agreements. Secondly, we are talking about amnesty... In pursuance of paragraph 6 of the Minsk Protocol of September 5, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada voted on the corresponding law introduced by the President of Ukraine on preventing prosecution and punishment.

But it remained in the status of a bill, since it was not signed and submitted to the president for signature. Article 5 of the said bill contains an exhaustive list of articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, crimes under which are not subject to the law on non-prosecution,” Bodnar said.

According to the deputy minister, today Ukraine has supposedly already adopted all the legislative acts necessary to implement the amnesty as part of the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

“In accordance with the Law of Ukraine “On the Application of Amnesty in Ukraine”, full or partial exemption from punishment can be considered only after the election of legitimate authorities in the occupied territories, that is, after the restoration of the sovereignty of Ukraine. The decision to apply an amnesty is made by the court.

Also, the amnesty does not include crimes that, in accordance with international law, are crimes of genocide, against humanity and war crimes. Also, those who committed the crime of shooting down a Malaysian Boeing are not eligible for amnesty,” Bodnar added.

The republics of Donbass hastened to refute this statement of the Ukrainian official, calling it a lie.

“Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine Vasil Bodnar today reported to the Rada that “Ukraine has adopted all the laws for amnesty in the Donbass” and openly lied.

Since September 2014, the situation in this area has not changed at all. 5 years ago, the still “unpatriotic Rada” voted for the law “On preventing the prosecution and punishment of persons participating in events in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions,” but it was “lost” by the then acting. Speaker of the Rada Alexander Turchynov. He did not sign it himself and did not submit it to the president for signature. The bill still hangs on the Rada website with the status “preparing for signature.”

Commenting on the provisions of the law, the deputy minister spoke about the provisions of the inactive law, but referred to the 1996 law “On the peculiarities of the application of amnesty in Ukraine,” which has nothing to do with the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

There is nothing new in this statement, the new government just took out Poroshenko’s manuals and repeats after him that we have “already done everything.”

For the Ze-team, imitation of settlement actions is much more suitable than their actual implementation. Well, the level of knowledge of the deputy minister himself can be left without comment, as well as the level of the parliament, which “swallowed” such statements,” said Rodion Miroshnik, special representative of the LPR at the Minsk negotiations.