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Chairman of Ukrainian Parliament's Foreign Policy Committee Bohdan Yaremenko has said that the Minsk agreements need to be transformed, while ways to implement them should also be changed.

"They won't go anywhere. It's impossible to turn them down," Yaremenko told TSN.

Despite Russia's demands to Kyiv to implement Minsk agreements, there is nothing in the deal who insists on this, there's nothing said in the deal of the need to agree on the so-called "Steinmeier formula" of Donbas settlement, according to the MP.

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"This is already a revision of the agreements," he said. "I think that we will go through the transformation, to figure out at what stages we radically change the interpretation and understanding of the way the Minsk agreements shall be implemented."

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At the same time, he called these agreements a "disgrace", emphasizing that "they did not bring peace." "But, almost certainly, it seems to me that in the medium term Ukraine will not be able to reject the Minsk agreements, although from my perspective, these agreements are partial surrender on the part of our state. These agreements are a disgrace, they didn't bring us peace. But we can't turn them down," the people's deputy explained.  

As UNIAN reported earlier, head of the Verkhovna Rada’s Foreign Policy Committee Bohdan Yaremenko (Servant of the People), intends to draft a bill that would introduce liability for persons leading unauthorized negotiations on behalf of Ukraine.

On Dec 21, 2016, German Ambassador to Ukraine Ernst Reichel said that the so-called "Steinmeier formula" provides for the consolidation in the Ukrainian legislation of the special status of Donbas.

"This formula, which is the subject of discussion, provides that local elections will be held under the control and with the assistance of the OSCE. Then the OSCE must confirm that the elections were in line with international standards. If the OSCE confirms this, legislation on special status comes into force; if not, then it doesn't. There will be no special status for this territory," Reichel said.

On July 4, 2017, Reichel stated that a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons in Donetsk and Luhansk regions should precede the holding of local elections, which should lead to the beginning of a special procedure for launching a local government in Donbas.

On June 18, 2018, the then-Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, said that the "Steinmeier formula" was the logic of how the special regime of local government was to be applied.