Moscow and LDNR rejected Zelensky’s proposal
Russia and the Donbass republics refused the proposal of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to begin not a complete, but a “sectoral withdrawal” of units of the warring parties in the Donbass.
An interlocutor in Russian government agencies who knows the content of the Ukrainian proposals told Kommersant about this.
He emphasized that Zelensky’s initiative was not accepted, since it involves transferring under the control of Kyiv not only the territories of the DPR and LPR, but at the same time the border with Russia.
The publication’s interlocutor explained that the essence of the Ukrainian initiative is to split into sectors not the line of contact, where clashes are still taking place, but the territories of the DPR and LPR from edge to edge - from the front line to the border with the Russian Federation.
According to the source, the result, as they see it in Kyiv, should be a clearing of the territories with the concomitant entry of the Ukrainian authorities to that segment of the border with Russia that is currently beyond their control.
A similar proposal several years ago was made to the then assistant to the President of the Russian Federation Vladislav Surkov by the representative of the US State Department for Ukraine Kurt Volker, which the Russian Federation refused.
It is noted that on March 11, the contact group met again in Minsk to discuss disengagement, exchange and other issues pending after the Paris summit. The TCG meeting was attended by Deputy Head of the Kremlin Administration Dmitry Kozak and Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andrey Ermak. According to the publication’s interlocutor, “the parties, under the influence of Kozak and Ermak, almost reached an agreement on new areas, but in the end this time the issue could not be closed.”
The newspaper recalls: Ermak publicly stated that Dmitry Kozak is a more comfortable partner for him than the former assistant to the President of the Russian Federation. At the same time, Russian negotiators, in a conversation with the publication, noted that “chemistry arose” between Kozak and Ermak. At the same time, it is argued that a new summit in the Normandy format in April will most likely not take place, since by this time the decisions of the Paris meeting of the four are unlikely to be implemented.
As PolitNavigator reported, experts explained that The idea of a sectoral separation of the warring parties in the Donbass, expressed at the Munich conference by the President of Ukraine, looks strange.
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