Kyiv May Resort to Military Provocations to Evade Minsk Deal
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Ukraine may use various provocations as a pretext to continue non-compliance with the Minsk agreements to settle the conflict in the east of the country, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Meshkov said Monday.
“Today there is a danger of Kyiv more actively employing all sorts of military provocations, trying to create a pretext for the continuing non-compliance with its obligations” Meshkov told RIA Novosti in an interview.
Meshkov added that Ukraine had failed to take steps toward the Minsk agreement implementation, such as adopting constitutional reforms on the country’s decentralization or laws to prohibit prosecution of people involved in the Donbass conflict.
Kyiv launched a military operation in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, after the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk had rejected the new coup-imposed government.
In February 2015, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France brokered the Minsk peace deal, later signed by representatives of Kyiv and the Donbass independence supporters.
The Minsk agreements stipulate a ceasefire, a weapons withdrawal from the line of contact in eastern Ukraine, constitutional reforms to decentralize power in the country, and the granting of a special status to the Donbass region.