Kyiv's public statements on settling Ukraine crisis do not inspire optimism - Lavrov
MOSCOW. March 21 (Interfax) - Moscow feels no optimism about the Ukrainian leadership's public statements regarding the situation in the southeastern part of the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"The Ukrainian leader's public statements do not inspire optimism at all," Lavrov said in a Saturday analytical program hosted by Sergei Brilyov on Russian television.
The Russian foreign minister said he would like to get firsthand impressions from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's further plans after visiting Berlin earlier this week.
"Ukrainian first deputy presidential chief of staff Vitaly Kovalchyk said that, regardless of what the February 12 Minsk agreements say, elections in those territories [Donbas] will be held only after the Kyiv authorities regain full control over them," Lavrov said.
"Yury Lutsenko, the leader of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction at the Verkhovna Rada, spoke in the same vein by reiterating that this would happen only when these territories are under Ukrainian flags and laws and under the Ukrainian police's control," Lavrov said.
At the same time, "the Minsk agreements of February 12 say directly that a reform that the Ukrainian constitution should undergo should envision the right of these territories to have their own police units," Lavrov said.