Berlin and Paris are not in a position to influence Kiev and force it to comply with the Minsk agreements, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
“In addition, I would like to say that we regard such a position of Berlin and Paris as helpless in many respects. I don’t even want to speak here and give any negative, emotional assessments. I just want to state that such statements speak of helplessness to influence Kiev which is obliged to fulfill what it signed and what was approved during the adoption of the UN Security Council resolution”, – she said during a briefing on Friday.
At the end of March, the Ukrainian security forces announced that four soldiers were killed and two more were wounded during shelling near the village of Shumy in the Donetsk region. Kiev began to declare about the aggravation of the situation in Donbass. In turn, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics accused Kiev of exacerbation – according to their statements, there are provocations from the security forces, and the militias are opening fire back. Also, both the DPR and the LPR announced the discovery of dozens of units of Ukrainian military equipment in settlements.
In April 2014, the Ukrainian authorities launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR, which declared independence after the coup d’etat in Ukraine in February 2014. According to the latest UN data, about 13 thousand people became victims of the conflict. The issue of resolving the situation in Donbass is being discussed, in particular, during the meetings in Minsk of the contact group, which since September 2014 has already adopted three documents regulating steps to de-escalate the conflict. However, after the armistice agreements between the parties to the conflict, shootings continue.