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04Oct18
Ukrainian president signs law on extending special status of Donbass until end of 2019
Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has signed a law extending the special status of Donbass until December 31, 2019.
"Returned with the president’s signature," reads the document, published on the website of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada (parliament).
On October 3, the Ukrainian president submitted a relevant bill to the Verkhovna Rada, designating it as "urgent." The Rada passed the bill on October 4. The document says that its implementation "will help create conditions for continuing efforts to peacefully resolve the situation in certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions and ensure the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine."
Special status law
Ukraine adopted a law providing special status to certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in October 2014 for a three-year term. The document is crucial for finding a political solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The self-proclaimed Donbass republics have said many times that Kiev’s refusal to extend the law will mean a refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements.
On October 6, 2017, the Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) passed a bill, which extended the special status of Donbass for another year. However, Kiev amended the law to ensure that it will only come into force after Ukrainian authorities gain full control of the areas in question and "all the illegal armed units and military equipment" are withdrawn.
The move undermined the Contact Group’s negotiations on holding regional elections in Donbass and introducing self-government as part of a constitutional reform in Ukraine in accordance with the Minsk Accords and the Normandy Quartet’s agreement on the so-called "Steinmeier formula" (put forward by then German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier). Moreover, the amended law said that the extension of the special status was particularly aimed at "creating conditions for the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping mission."
Rodion Miroshnik, the Representative of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) to the Contact Group on resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine, commented on the extension of the special status of Donbass by saying that "the implementation of the law has been blocked for the entire four years that have passed since the law was adopted." According to him, today, "the Rada has confirmed that it is controlled by Washington, as [US Special Representative for Ukraine Negotiations Kurt] Volker expressed a wish that the law be extended and 245 independent members of the Rada voted for that." Miroshnik said that the move was part of a game Kiev was playing with the West and in fact had nothing to do with efforts to reach a compromise with the Donbass republics for Kiev was only pretending to be abiding by the Minsk Agreements.
[Source: Itar Tass, Kiev, 04Oct18]
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