Five hours of negotiations on Donbass in Berlin: Kyiv awaits new cries of “Zrada!”
There are no breakthroughs; contradictions remain on almost all key issues. This conclusion follows from the words of Deputy Head of the Russian Presidential Administration Dmitry Kozak, who today participated in negotiations on the fate of Donbass in Germany.
"There are no breakthroughs... On practically all issues, inconsistent solutions were presented," Kozak said, according to a PolitNavigator correspondent.
The official stressed that Moscow does not see the need for a new meeting of the Normandy Four presidents, since Ukraine disrupted the implementation of the agreements reached during the previous summit.
" There are no grounds for holding a summit . A summit is needed to make new decisions after the previous ones have been implemented. If we endlessly hold summits just to talk, we will postpone the conflict resolution indefinitely," Kozak said.
According to him, Ukraine is demonstrating a desire to “move away from the Minsk agreements.”
Kozak suggested that the Ukrainian authorities submit proposals for changes to the Minsk agreements. " Clearly put forward your proposals – what do you want? " the Russian official said.
However, there is one point mentioned by Kozak that promises heightened passions in Kyiv.
At the negotiations in Germany, it was agreed that the Ukrainian authorities would have to bring the law on local elections into line with the Minsk agreements.
This law was adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on July 15 and scheduled elections for mayors and city councils in Ukraine in the fall. However, Kyiv deputies refused to coordinate the elections in Donetsk and Lugansk under the pretext that they were “occupied” and “Russian troops” must first be withdrawn.
This sequence contradicts the Minsk agreements (they provide for the election of leaders in the LDPR who are recognized by Kyiv, and the subsequent achievement of a compromise).
However, since the time of Petro Poroshenko, it has become mainstream in Kyiv and the point of view remains that it is impossible to hold elections before the capture of Donetsk and Lugansk by the Ukrainian army.
Thus, the agreement of the Ukrainian side to change the law, as mentioned by Kozak, will certainly cause new indignation among nationalists against the negotiator from Ukraine, Andrei Ermak.
“Ermak’s home again awaits the shouts of “Zrada!” – says political scientist Vladimir Kornilov.
This forecast has already been confirmed by Ukrainian political scientist Alexei Golobutsky, who serves Petro Poroshenko. " A Russian official is determining the parameters of local elections in Ukraine because he doesn't like something there , because it 'doesn't comply with the Minsk agreements,'" he said, indignantly at Kozak's comments.
If Kozak's demands are met by the Ukrainian government, Andriy Yermak, head of the presidential office and participant in the Berlin negotiations, should be charged with treason and espionage, threatens Golobutsky . He doesn't rule out prosecution of Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself, as Yermak's boss.
“Ermak represented someone in Berlin, someone signed some papers for this disgusting thing,” comments Golobutsky.
Considering that in previous times Vladimir Zelensky each time retreated from his promises on Donbass under pressure from the street crowd, it is easy to predict that the Ukrainian law on elections in the Rada will never be brought into line with Minsk-2.
At a briefing after the talks, Kozak also mentioned the agreement to maintain the truce. Kozak did not mention what will happen to the Ukrainian fortifications, which, as the head of the DPR Denis Pushilin stated, were built under the cover of the ceasefire period. Kyiv, as you know, disrupted the inspection of the positions, and the order to destroy new fortifications of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was never received by the defenders of the republics.
“The main result: we agreed to negotiate further, but against the backdrop of a ceasefire,” LPR representative Rodion Miroshnik briefly explains the outcome of the meeting in Germany.
It should be noted that in general Kozak’s trip to Germany for negotiations surprised observers, because quite recently the media reported that the curator of the “Ukrainian issue” threatened to no longer participate in meaningless meetings, since Kyiv was disrupting all agreements.
“Remember Kozak’s famous letter that he considers meetings in the format of advisers to the heads of state of the Normandy Four to be unpromising and no longer intends to participate in them? So, right now Kozak has arrived in Berlin for a meeting in this very format. P – sequence,” commented the editor of the Odessa website “Timer” Yuri Tkachev during the day.
But one of the commanders of the Donetsk militia, Alexander Khodakovsky, saw a good sign in the fruitless negotiations in Berlin.
"Well, the more than five-hour meeting of advisers... heads... of state... participants... of the Normandy Four (he barely managed to say it) ended in nothing. It's precisely behind this 'nothing' that the main 'something' lies. If there had been any progress in their dialogue, we would have had to start bringing out what we've carefully hidden and painstakingly lubricated, because that would mean they'd voiced acceptable conditions for forcing us into a place we don't want to be forced into.
Are we against peace and for endless war? Well, no, of course not. I have always said that war for the sake of war is not our choice. But let's shove the Japanese into the Chinese based only on the fact that their eye shape is similar. And although the Japanese are not so similar to the Chinese in general, for all their dissimilarity they are still closer to each other than we and Ukraine after six years of war. If someone today does not understand this, then with his efforts to merge us in a “brotherly” embrace with Ukraine, he is creating a disaster even greater than NATO in Yugoslavia,” explains Khodakovsky.
English version :: Read in English Five hours of negotiations on Donbass in Berlin: Kyiv awaits new cries of "Treason!"