Kyiv Forgets Donbas Citizens While Setting Its Cap at West – Spanish Press
Ukrainian leadership is too concentrated on finding allies in the West forgetting about citizens living in the east of their own country, Spanish newspaper El Pais writes.
“The persuasive desire of Kyiv toward [cooperation with] the West offers a contast to its negligence and indifference toward those who doesn’t want to or isn’t able to leave the territory of the Eastern Ukraine,” the newspaper says noting that until recently 6 million people have been living in Donbas.
The citizens of the Ukraine’s crisis-torn eastern regions have not been receiving pensions since autumn 2014, El Pais emphasizes adding that Kyiv authorities have limited the freedom of movement by introducing special passes for people living in the areas controlled by eastern Ukrainian militia.
In November 2014, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree imposing an economic blockade on eastern Ukraine and withdrawing all state-funded health, educational and social protection organizations from the Donbas region. The authorities of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk have repeatedly urged Kyiv to remove the economic restrictions.
The most recent talks on Ukraine reconciliation were held in the Belarusian capital Minsk on February 12. The leaders of Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine brokered a peace deal between Kyiv and Donbas republics aimed at the de-escalation of the east Ukraine crisis. The measures hammered out in Minsk include a ceasefire, which became effective on February 15, heavy artillery withdrawal from the line of contact, all-for-all prisoner swap, as well as lifting an economic blockade of eastern Ukraine.