The statement issued by the terrorists of DNR (“Donetsk People’s Republic”) and LNR (“Luhansk People’s Republic”) about their readiness for new negotiations and amendments to the Minsk agreements is nothing but a pretext for a new offensive.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who personally has not reacted to President Poroshenko’s proposal to repeal the law on the special status of the Donbas, has now done so through the mouths of the terrorists under his control.
Today the “joint statement of the DNR and LNR” was made public, in which the terrorists expressed their outrage at the decision of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) to abolish the special status law. According to Zakharchenko (so-called “prime minister” of DNR), Plotnytskyi (“LNR prime minister”) and others, the NSDC decision on Tuesday, November 4, ” invalidates the Minsk agreements” because “according to the version of the accord agreed to with the DNR and LNR, Kyiv was obligated to pass the law on the special status as well as the law on amnesty.”
“Obviously the (Minsk protocol) version should have been reviewed. The DNR and LNR cannot act on the basis of a document from which Poroshenko has removed a fundamentally important point. We are ready to work on a new version of the protocol,” the terrorists announced, who, incidentally, have never recognized the law in question and who, by and large, have never adhered to the Minsk agreements.
Additionally, the militants announced they are ready to continue pursuing peace talks with the Ukrainian government. “In the coming days the popularly elected heads of DNR and LNR will name their representatives to the Minsk negotiations,” the announcement states.
Of course, the terrorists have not announced any concrete proposals for the new version of the Minsk agreement because, in fact, they do not exist. Therefore, with today’s announcement, the Kremlin is seeking to drag Ukraine into a new negotiating process with the participation of these same DNR and LNR terrorists, who now have the “status” of “popularly elected legitimate representatives of the republics,” as emphasized separately in the statement.
By agreeing to these talks, the Ukrainian side would in effect recognize the terrorists Zakharchenko and Plotnytsky to be the authorized representatives of the Donbas — something Ukraine clearly cannot accept. If Poroshenko would even agree to new negotiations, it would only be in a format that included the participation of representatives of the EU and Russia, placing the self-declared “chiefs” in quotation marks.
At the same time, Ukraine’s refusal of proposed talks with the “legitimate government of Donbas” will become a pretext for the terrorists and the Kremlin to resume military action and begin a new offensive, claiming that allegedly “we are of peace, but the bloody junta does not want negotiations.”
Given the fact that Russia in recent days has been actively sending new troops and equipment to the Donbas, this scenario does not seem at all unrealistic.
