Minsk process to become pointless unless parties agree to tie military, political components of Donbas settlement - source
MOSCOW/LUHANSK. March 28 (Interfax) - The Minsk process is at a transitional stage, the parties are trying to work out a document tying the military and political components of the Donbas armed-conflict settlement, a source in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) told Interfax on the eve of another of its meetings in Minsk.
"The parties have taken a wait-and-see position. You cannot expect key decisions in such circumstances. However, neither of them has the intention of quitting the Minsk process either," the source said.
The TCG is attempting to formulate a document that would encourage implementation of the Package of Measures by tying the military and political components, he said.
"We are talking about the roadmap that was to be approved as far back as last October, but the process got extremely protracted and stagnated. The idea of the document is to fix a strict order of observing the Package of Measures and to tie security-boosting measures in the region to the political-settlement process, so that one is impossible without the other," the source said.
Otherwise, "the Minsk process becomes pointless," he said.
For his part Vladislav Deinego, who represents the self-proclaimed Luhansk people's republic at the Minsk talks, accused of Kyiv of sabotaging the Minsk Agreements, thus creating the conditions for the self-proclaimed Donbas republics finally seceding from Ukraine.
"Kyiv sabotaged the implementation of the Minsk Agreements from the very start. However, now we have come to a point where Ukraine is effectively rejecting them entirely by complying neither with the requirement to withdraw equipment, which is back to its initial positions, nor with the entire bloc of political issues," Deinego told Interfax.
"Kyiv has officially admitted its transport blockade of Donbas," he said.
"All of these Kyiv activities are having the opposite effect. They only help the republics gain ever more independence, right up to the full recognition. Thus Kyiv is creating all conditions which definitively make their return to Ukraine impossible," Deinego said.
It was reported that the next TCG meeting will be held in Minsk on March 29.
Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine's former president who represents the country in the TCG, said a day earlier that the meeting will focus primarily on ceasefire and hostage exchange.
The second issue on the TCG agenda on Wednesday will be the release of illegally imprisoned people on both sides, Kuchma said.