Kiev's Decision to Declare Parts of Donbas 'Occupied' Rewrites Minsk Deal

Russian Foreign Miniter Sergei Lavrov critisized Tuesday's decision made by President Poroshenko and the Ukrainian parliament to declare areas under the control of the self-proclaimed southeastern republics “temporarily occupied.”

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Ukrainian Parliament's recent decision to declare parts of Ukraine's Donbas region "occupied territories" is a gross violation of the peace agreements reached in Minsk, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

On Tuesday, Poroshenko and the Ukrainian parliament made several decisions on the status of the country’s eastern regions. The parliament decided to postpone the long-awaited decision of giving the two eastern regions special status until elections under Ukrainian law are held. Verkhovna Rada also declared areas under the control of the DPR and LPR “temporarily occupied.”

“The Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian parliament] made decisions, proposed by [President Petro] Poroshenko, which essentially rewrite the agreement, or, to put it simply, grossly violate them,” Lavrov said at a joint press conference with Gabonese Foreign Minister Emmanuel Issoze-Ngondet.

Granting special status to parts of the DPR and the LPR was one of key points of the agreement signed by both Kiev authorities and independence supporters in Minsk in February.

Kiev neglected that, in accordance with the Minsk deal, there should be dialogue with the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics on holding local elections, according to the Russian minister. “Nobody even tried to do this,” he said.

Lavrov added that he had contacted his counterparts in Germany and France to draw their attention to the “blatant violations of the very first steps of the Minsk political package.”