Zakharova to Reznikov: The Budapest memorandum flew away with Yanukovych
Russia is not responsible for the consequences of the coup d'etat staged by nationalists in February 2014, as a result of which the territorial integrity of Ukraine suffered.
Official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova stated this during a briefing, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Kyiv continues to evade implementation of the Minsk agreements in every possible way. Now Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the “Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories” Reznikov has also joined this “interesting game.” According to his status in the Minsk contact group, he should be engaged in the implementation of that same Set of Measures, which is signed by Ukraine.
For some reason, it is completely unclear, in his statements the representative of Ukraine mixed everything up - both the Minsk agreements on Donbass and the Budapest memorandum were mentioned again. He proposed to convene its participants. By the way, a very important point - only three: the USA, Great Britain and Ukraine, without Russia.
This is not the first time we have heard from Ukraine about the use of the Budapest Memorandum to discuss the situation in the South-East of Ukraine. Actually, there is nothing new in this, although previously such initiatives did not come from officials who would have been directly involved in the negotiation processes. These were opinions around the negotiations, now this opinion has been voiced within the framework of the negotiation process,” Zakharova said.
She emphasized that, unlike people not involved in the negotiation process, Deputy Prime Minister Reznikov is well aware that the Budapest Memorandum has nothing to do “with the internal Ukrainian conflict in Donbass.”
“I want to once again remind those who have forgotten the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 that Russia is not responsible for the consequences of the coup d’etat staged by nationalists in February 2014, as a result of which, in fact, the territorial integrity of Ukraine suffered.
And in this regard, we consider Mr. Reznikov’s statement as another attempt to get away from the work of resolving the conflict in accordance with the Package of Measures, it was adopted in February 2015, to break the Minsk and Normandy formats, replacing them with an alternative platform without Donetsk and Lugansk, this is such an idea fix of the Kyiv authorities - having buried the Minsk agreements, start from scratch. This is apparently how the task in Kyiv was formulated.
Maybe this is the same plan “B”, or maybe plan “C”, which has been talked about so often in Kyiv lately, this is an open question. By the way, it would be interesting to hear the opinion of France and Germany on this matter, since they are also involved in the Normandy format,” added the Foreign Ministry representative.
Zakharova also “once again” called on the Ukrainian side to stop sabotaging the Minsk agreements and redirect their energy and creativity to fulfilling their obligations under the Set of Measures and a package of decisions at the Paris Normandy Format summit.
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