Militia blame Kyiv for disrupting Minsk meeting
MINSK. Jan 16 (Interfax) - The authorized representative of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) to the talks in Minsk, Denis Pushilin, has accused Kyiv of disrupting another round of consultations of the Contact Group in Minsk.
"It was Ukraine's fault that the talks were disrupted. But we are ready to sit down at the negotiating table and have never restricted ourselves to just military issues, adding economic issues to the agenda. We are ready to continue the peace dialogue with any official representatives (from Kyiv) who make decisions," Pushilin told reporters on Friday evening.
For his part, the authorized representative of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), Vladislav Deinego, said "the talks will go ahead because we were invited by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe)."
Earlier a source close to the Contact Group told Interfax that the meeting had failed to take place in Minsk on Friday because it was the DPR and LPR negotiators and not their leaders, Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, who arrived for the meeting.