Washington, DC. In develops surely to bring on heart attacks in Kiev and European capitals, the United States intends to bypass Minsk as a reason to continue sanctions upon Russia.
Rex Tillerson, US Secretary of State believes the US should develop a “more flexible” approach to the Ukrainian crisis instead of just strictly tying anti-Russian sanctions to the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
The US Secretary of State suggested that Moscow and Kiev could eventually find some other way to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine through means that would lie outside of the framework of the Minsk Accords.
“My caution is I wouldn’t want to have ourselves handcuffed to Minsk if it turns out the parties decide to settle this through another, a different, agreement,” Tillerson said as he spoke to the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“I think it is important that we be given sufficient flexibility to achieve the Minsk objectives. It is very possible that the government of Ukraine and the government of Russia could come to a satisfactory resolution through some structure other than Minsk,” he added.
Tillerson’s statements have been interpreted as a potential break from the US administration’s earlier stance that regarded the progress in the implementation of the Minsk Agreements as a key condition for lifting the sanctions imposed on Moscow in 2014.
The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin called such a view on the Ukrainian conflict an oversimplification.
Karasin said that “the only arrangement” is the existing working groups, including the tripartite contact group in Minsk, adding that “everything depends on the instructions that Kiev gives to its representatives.” The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics have to be part of the solution, or the conflict would be “practically impossible to resolve.”