Kyiv at the talks proposes to create in Ukraine an Austrian or Swedish version of a demilitarized state with its own army, said the head of the Russian delegation, presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky.
“The preservation and development of the neutral status of Ukraine, the demilitarization of Ukraine – a whole range of issues related to the size of the Ukrainian army is being discussed. Ukraine offers an Austrian, Swedish version of a neutral demilitarized state, but at the same time a state that has its own army and naval forces. All these issues are being discussed at the level of the leaderships of the Ministries of Defense of Russia and Ukraine,” Medinsky said.
The head of the Russian delegation recalled that “Ukraine has a neutral status even now.”
“It was on the condition of neutrality that Ukraine withdrew from the Soviet Union in 1991, and this neutrality is written in the Declaration of Sovereignty of Ukraine,” he stressed.
“Of course, the key issue for us is the status of Crimea and Donbass, as well as a number of humanitarian issues, including denazification, the rights of the Russian-speaking population and the status of the Russian language, and so on,” Medinsky added. At the same time, he denied statements from Kyiv about the exclusion of the item on the denazification of Ukraine from the agenda of the negotiations.
“No, this is not entirely true. The topic of denazification and tougher punishment, law enforcement, in the first place, punishments for glorifying Nazism, neo-Nazism, extremism based on them, is still an important item on the agenda of the talks,” Medinsky said.