REUTERS
U.S. Department Spokesperson Heather Nauert has said that the U.S. is ready to support an alternative to the Minsk agreements on the settlement of the Donbas crisis in the east of Ukraine if the new format is successful.
"The parties, if they were to come to some sort of an agreement on their own through some sort of different mechanism, and those parties could adhere to it and agree to it and it would be successful, I think that would be something that we would be open to supporting that," Nauert said at a press briefing on June 15.
"I would say overall, our objective on that matter remains the same. The objective is peace. We are not seeing that happen. We have some numbers, the United Nations has some numbers and some statistics about how the number of civilian deaths are up. We remain very concerned about the situation there," she said.
Read alsoPoroshenko to table Donbas reintegration bill in parliament soon – lawmakerAs UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that the United States was ready to continue and even toughen sanctions against Russia in case of its non-fulfillment of the Minsk agreements.
"We are in constant dialogue with our American partners, and the U.S. is constantly present at Normandy format meetings at the ambassadorial level and has full information and coordination," Poroshenko said.