Federation Council calls on European colleagues to demand that Kyiv strictly observe Minsk Agreements
MOSCOW. Feb 28 (Interfax) - Federation Council members call on European parliaments to assess the so-called Donbas reintegration law as undermining the Minsk Agreements and demand that Kyiv strictly observe them.
"The law is fundamentally contrary to international obligations Ukraine assumed in accordance with the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements signed on February 12, 2015, and approved by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2202 of February 15, 2015," the Federation Council said in a statement adopted due to the law's entry into effect.
"Furthermore, the collective agreements achieved three years ago in Minsk are not mentioned in this law at all, and it speaks eloquently of Kyiv's true attitude towards them," the statement said.
"Ukraine's compulsion to peace by those states and international organizations on which Ukraine depends politically and economically today is the only possible way to influence its position and ensure the implementation of the Minsk Agreements against the background of Ukraine's de facto refusal to adhere to its international obligations," senators said.
This is why the Federation Council has offered the parliaments of the member states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and international parliamentary organizations of Europe, - the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament, - "to give an unequivocal assessment of the Ukrainian law 'On specifics of the state policy to ensure Ukraine's state sovereignty on temporary occupied territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions' as undermining the Minsk Agreements and demand that Kyiv strictly observe them, as well as end pursuing the policy dangerous to the European security and stability."
Senators expressed deep concern due to the entry into effect of this law, which "is essentially aimed at legally enshrining the Ukrainian version of the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, which is 'deterrence of armed aggression' of the Russian Federation." According to the Federation Council, "Kyiv is seeking to evade all responsibility for the humanitarian and socioeconomic situation in Donetsk and Luhansk and have a free hand to use the armed forces against its own citizens, who refused to support the coup d'etat in Ukraine in 2014."
"The so-called 'revolution of dignity' resulted for Ukraine in a systemic political and socioeconomic crisis and degradation of the society. The country is rapidly turning into an anti-democratic state, in which Russophobia is being presented as a national ideology and legally entrenched," the document said.
According to senators, those trends were also enshrined in the Ukrainian law on education, which had entered into effect despite protests of many European countries.
"Recent attacks at the Russian Cultural and Scientific Center in Kyiv committed by local nationalist organizations, while the Ukrainian authorities refused to intervene, became a cynical reflection of the situation in the current Ukrainian society," the statement said.
"The West's policy of 'appeasement' and essentially encouragement of the military solution of 'the Donbas issue' by the Ukrainian authorities facilitated the current deadlock in the internal Ukrainian settlement to a great extent," it said.