European Envoys Press Kyiv on Minsk Deal

European Envoys Press Kyiv on Minsk Deal

Ukrainian parliament reportedly lacks votes to pass crucial constitutional amendment backed by Brussels and Washington.

20 January 2016

Two European diplomats have reportedly failed to persuade Ukrainian lawmakers to pass a Western-backed proposal to grant more autonomy to rebel-held regions.

 

French presidential envoy Jacques Audibert and his German counterpart Christoph Heusgen met President Petro Poroshenko (pictured) on 19 January to discuss the situation in the conflict zone, and also met the country’s negotiators at the ongoing Minsk peace talks.

 

According to an unnamed Ukrainian diplomat cited by AFP, they also talked to lawmakers about the constitutional amendment granting greater autonomy to two eastern regions on condition they remain part of Ukraine – a key provision in the Western-brokered Minsk peace agreement.

 

But a second unnamed source said the envoys were rebuffed. “From what I have been told, they were informed that [parliament] lacked the votes to do this,” the source told AFP.

 

The presidential press service account of the envoys’ meeting with Poroshenko stressed their common concern over “numerous violations of the cease-fire regime and the impeding of OSCE work by the militants,” Ukrinform reports.

 

Aside from minor recent violations of the truce, Ukraine’s European and American partners are growing increasingly worried about the slow pace of the peace process and of economic and other reforms the EU demands in return for closer integration.

 

Earlier this week a group of nine EU countries circulated an internal letter calling on Kyiv to up the pace of reforms.

 

In other developments in Ukraine:

 

 

  • U.S. President Barack Obama and Russia’s Vladimir Putin discussed the Ukrainian war on 13 January “during a rare but wide-ranging phone conversation,” and followed up by sending aides to the Kaliningrad region two days later for more talks on ending the war, AFP says.

 

  • A Crimean Tatar activist says the civilian-led economic blockade of the peninsula will continue until it is freed from Russian control, Radio Free Europe reports.

 

  • Ukraine has granted political asylum to Russian journalist Dmitry Shipilov, who spent three months in a Russian prison after he left Siberia to escape a sentence of 11 months’ community service for insulting the Siberian Kemerovo region’s governor.

 

  • Ukrainian Naftogaz has refused to pay a $2.59 billion bill from Russian gas giant Gazprom for gas it was contracted to purchase in the third quarter of 2015. Naftogaz argues that the “take or pay” condition in the contract is illegal and plans to challenge it in court, TASS reports.

 

 

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