German lawmaker: Ukraine’s bill on Donbass means Kiev scrapping Minsk accord

According to a member of German The Left Party, the adoption by the Verkhovna Rada of the bill on the reintegration of Donbass in its current version shows that Kiev would abandon the Minsk accord.

The Ukrainian parliament’s adoption of the bill on the reintegration of Donbass in a version that drops references to the primary importance of the Minsk agreements signifies Kiev’s decision to abandon the accord, Wolfgang Gehrcke, a member of German The Left Party, said on Friday.

Rada approved the bill earlier in the day in first reading after the article on the Minsk agreements was removed from the text.

“Today’s decision of the Verkhovna Rada means, in principle, that they will abandon the Minsk agreements. And in that case, it must be admitted that it was not the leadership of the Donetsk side or even the Russian side that abandoned the Minsk agreements. It means that the government in Kiev did this,” Gehrcke told reporters at a press conference in Moscow.

The bill suggests that the policy on the breakaway region in the southeast of Ukraine should be guided by the UN Security Council resolution on Donbass.

The Minsk peace accords, agreed in 2015, set several conditions for the settlement of the conflict between the two self-proclaimed republics in Donbass and Kiev. In particular, a reform on the decentralization of Ukraine was expected, which would take into account the specifics of certain districts of Donetsk and Luhansk districts.