The Ukrainian elections on October 25 will most likely not affect the DPR and LPR

Moscow – Kyiv, April 3 (PolitNavigator, Mikhail Shtamm) – When Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced yesterday in Ternopil that local elections in Ukraine would be held on October 25, it turns out he wasn't referring to the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). A source in his administration told Vedomosti this.

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Poroshenko’s statement yesterday refers only to the territories, including Donbass, that are under the control of Kyiv, since some experts are discussing the possibility of postponing local elections, but this would require changing the constitution, explains Vedomosti’s interlocutor in the Ukrainian presidential administration.

It is premature to talk about when elections will be held on the territory of the DPR and LPR, it all depends on the implementation of the Minsk agreements, he said: Kiev “would be more interested” if the elections coincided, but they think that the self-proclaimed republics will not agree to this in order to distance themselves from Ukraine.

The Minsk agreements are also appealed to in Lugansk, emphasizing that they are ready to start a “dialogue on the modalities” of elections only after Kiev fulfills the clause on constitutional reform. “Let them change the constitution, having previously agreed with us, only after that we are ready to discuss elections,” Chairman of the LPR Parliament Alexey Karyakin told Vedomosti. The work of subgroups within the trilateral contact group has not even begun yet, adds LPR special representative at the negotiations Vladislav Deinego.

“The republics need firm guarantees that Kiev will fulfill its obligations even for the very fact of negotiations on elections, and even more so for agreements on the specifics of the electoral process,” says Alexey Chesnakov, head of the Center for Political Current Affairs, which is close to the Kremlin. He believes that with the current version of the Ukrainian law on special status, it will not be possible to agree on elections.