Moscow Sees No Sense in Discussing Kiev’s Peacekeeping Initiative Without Luhansk, Donetsk

Discussion of an initiative on a peacekeeping operation in Ukraine is impossible without the participation of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday, FNA reported.

Lavrov commented on Kiev’s statement that the Normandy Four (Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France) plan to consider “modalities” and timeframe of a peacekeeping operation in Ukraine.

“We as polite people will be ready to listen to the proposals of our Ukrainian colleagues when we gather next time at this or that level in the Normandy format,” the Russian foreign minister said.

At the same time, Lavrov said “there is no sense in discussing any new ideas that were not mentioned in Minsk without the participation of Luhansk and Donetsk”. “And we will rely on this,” Lavrov said.

“Everything is possible. If they explain to us why the efforts of enhancing the OSCE mission should be stopped halfway and why the peacekeeping operation that, as everyone acknowledges, needs to be prepared for around half a year is a more efficient tool then, probably, we will be able to understand the motives of such a new initiative,” Lavrov said.

“In any case, speaking about peacekeepers in the conflict zone in Ukraine, it impossible to do this without the participation and without taking into account the opinion of Luhansk and Donetsk,” Lavrov stressed.

The Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, on March 17 adopted an address of President Petro Poroshenko to the UN Security Council and the European Council requesting deployment of peacekeepers to the conflict zone in Donbas, Itar-Tass reported.

Shortly after the announcement, the heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, in a joint statement stressed that the request was against the logics of the February 12 Minsk peace plan.

R.S