Poroshenko Says Ukraine Will Regain Territories

Poroshenko Says Ukraine Will Regain Territories

Ukraine’s president blames Russia for delays in implementing Minsk agreement and for providing greater autonomy for separatist regions – but pledges Kyiv will get Crimea back.

22 January 2016

Ukraine’s president says sanctions against Russia imposed by the U.S. and Europe, coupled with low oil prices, are “working” but not enough to stop his counterpart Vladimir Putin from delaying the implementation the Minsk peace agreement.

 

“Unfortunately, we do not have any positive delivery from the Russian side,” President Petro Poroshenko told Bloomberg Television in an interview on the margins of the World Economic Forum in Davos on 21 January, saying it was “completely under Putin’s control” to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine, and tied that effort to granting greater autonomy to rebel-controlled regions.

 

His comments came the day after a meeting of the so-called Minsk contact group – consisting of Ukraine, Russia, pro-Russian separatists, and the OSCE in the Belarusian capital – and his separate, four-hour meeting in Davos with U.S. Vice Joseph President Biden.

 

Poroshenko said he and Biden had said discussed a “road map” for constitutional change in Ukraine, including how to conduct elections in separatist-controlled Donbas “in line with Ukrainian laws and with the broad participation of international observers,” Interfax reported.

 

The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, established in Donbass after controversial independence referendums in May 2014, have been calling for more autonomy from Kyiv.

 

Earlier this week, two European diplomats, French presidential envoy Jacques Audibert and his German counterpart Christoph Heusgen, reportedly failed to persuade Ukrainian lawmakers to pass a Western-backed proposal to grant the rebel-held regions more autonomy.

 

But Poroshenko says such efforts are hampered by what he called Russia’s failure to withdraw troops from the war zone, hand back control of the border and release prisoners, Bloomberg reported, noting Ukraine’s ruling coalition is struggling to get the parliamentary support for changing the constitution.

 

 

  • The Poroshenko-Biden meeting is part of “a flurry of diplomacy over eastern Ukraine” in January, Bloomberg says. Putin adviser Vladislav Surkov, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland last week “brainstormed” on Ukraine in Kaliningrad last week and Russia’s new envoy at the Minsk talks, Boris Gryzlov, met Poroshenko in Kyiv.

 

  • Separately, Poroshenko said Ukraine would regain control over eastern Ukraine territory now held by Russia-backed separatists and the annexed peninsula of Crimea. In a marking the Unity Day holiday, he said the Ukrainian flag “will return to their legal and natural places in Donetsk and Luhansk, in Simferopol and Sevastopol,” Radio Free Europe writes, citing Interfax and UNIAN.

 

  • Ukraine plans to launch a fresh diplomatic initiative to recover Crimea. “This will be the year we really begin pressing forward on a process to return Crimea,” Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko told Reuters in Davos on 21 January.

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