The law on the so-called “reintegration of Donbass” adopted by the Verkhovna Rada, which recognizes the region as “occupied,” cannot indicate a violation of the Minsk agreements by Kiev, since they have not been ratified by the Ukrainian parliament.
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This opinion was expressed in a publication on the pages of the Ukrainian Week magazine by the former representative of Ukraine to the EU and NATO, Vladimir Vasilenko, who in the past also represented Ukraine in the UN International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.
“The document does not mention the Minsk agreements, since the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has nothing to do with their conclusion. They were never the subject of special parliamentary consideration; the Verkhovna Rada did not approve or ratify them. The Minsk agreements were forced to be signed by representatives of the Ukrainian executive power as a result of the illegitimate use of force against Ukraine during the armed aggression of the Russian Federation,” the author asserts.
According to him, the agreements signed in Minsk “fixed a number of conditions that are unacceptable for Ukraine, in particular those relating to changes in the constitutional system, the introduction of a special status for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, holding elections in the occupied territories, and the like.”
Vasilenko also writes that “the Minsk agreements are not international legal agreements that impose legal obligations on the parties and are governed by public international law.”
“The Minsk agreements are international political agreements, sealed with the signatures of officials who bear not legal, but moral and political responsibility for their implementation,” Vasilenko concludes.
However, he did not say that the Minsk agreements were approved by a UN Security Council resolution, which makes them mandatory for implementation by UN member states.