MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The Ukrainian parliament's adoption of the bill on the reintegration of Donbass in a version that drops references to the primary importance of the Minsk agreements signifies Kiev's decision to abandon the accord, Wolfgang Gehrcke, a member of German The Left Party, said on Friday.
Rada approved the bill earlier in the day in first reading after the article on the Minsk agreements was removed from the text.
"Today's decision of the Verkhovna Rada means, in principle, that they will abandon the Minsk agreements. And in that case, it must be admitted that it was not the leadership of the Donetsk side or even the Russian side that abandoned the Minsk agreements. It means that the government in Kiev did this," Gehrcke told reporters at a press conference in Moscow.
Meanwhile, Germany has highly appreciated the decision of the Ukrainian parliament to extend the 2014 law on special status for the country's eastern region of Donbass as it shows Kiev’s commitment to the Minsk Agreements, the German Foreign Ministry said in statement on Friday.
"The Federal Government highly appreciates the Ukrainian parliament’s extension of law on the special status of Donbass. It is a hard, but an important step, which demonstrates Ukraine’s commitment to its international obligations and implementation of the Minsk Agreements," the statement read.
Berlin underlined that in order to achieve further progress in the settlement of Donbass conflict "stabilization in terms of security, full and continuous ceasefire" were needed.
The Minsk peace accords, agreed in 2015, set several conditions for the settlement of the conflict between the two self-proclaimed republics in Donbass and Kiev. In particular, a reform on the decentralization of Ukraine was expected, which would take into account the specifics of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk districts.
