Head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas settlement Leonid Kravchuk expects that the parliamentary working group will develop a certain document regarding the local election prospects for the occupied Donbas ahead of the upcoming TCG meeting.
Kravchuk spoke to journalists on Wednesday following a Verkhovna Rada's Local Government Committee meeting which he had attended, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
"This was a really constructive meeting. The deputies have analyzed the situation very deeply and considered my appeal (calling for a resolution on local elections - UNIAN) from all angles ... It was about the fact that the elections will definitely be held once appropriate conditions are in place to this end, the same as they are for the territory controlled by Ukraine," said Kravchuk.
It is about "drafting a special law that would allow and ensure the conduct of democratic elections."
"Now the committees ... agreed that it is necessary to create a working group that will prepare appropriate proposals. At this stage, it would be premature to say that the issue has already been resolved," the ex-president of Ukraine said.
The corresponding working group, he added, will be created in the coming days.
When asked whether Russia had indeed issued an ultimatum to hold local elections in the occupied territories, Kravchuk said: "In general, there was no ultimatum […] Nobody put forward an ultimatum. But it was expressed so concretely, so harshly, and the point was – deliver on what you've signed," he said.
Read alsoDonbas war: Will renaming "special status" for "special regime" be of any help to UkraineAlso, when asked if the negotiations in Minsk could be disrupted if Ukraine fails to fulfill the demand to hold local elections in the occupied areas, the ex-president noted: "When the meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group starts, we will already have that document – I currently don't know what kind it will be – prepared by the working group. And we will say, at least, I will say, I'll repeat again that this is about a democratic parliament of Ukraine. In order to adopt the document, they must first comprehensively analyze and study it based on other documents, laws, and the Constitution of Ukraine. If this does not suit you, then suggest something else. At least, this will already be a reason for me to rely on something, for me not to just voice statements, words, or promises – I will show them the relevant document," said Kravchuk.
To a clarifying question on whether the working group will have time to develop such a document ahead of the next meeting of the TCG, he noted: "I hope so."
TCG talks: latest
- On July 15, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution scheduling the next local elections for October 25. According to the decision, elections in the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas have not been appointed and scheduled.
- At a TCG meeting on August 19, Kravchuk informed group members he had submitted to Parliament an appeal calling to verify the said resolution's compliance with the law on a special procedure for local government in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as thePackage of Measures to implement Minsk agreements.
- On August 20, journalist Sergiy Garmash who in the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG represents certain areas of Donetsk region, in a Facebook post opined that by leaking to the media a document demanding that the Verkhovna Rada resolution on local elections be canceled, Moscow made it impossible to fulfill this requirement and even submit the issue for Parliament consideration. Garmash believes that in this way Russia has deliberately driven the situation into a dead end, blocking a meeting of advisors to the Normandy Four leaders earlier scheduled for late August.
- On the same day, Kravchuk said that Russia was blocking the TCG work with a demand to cancel the Parliament resolution that bans local elections in the occupied territories. He said that at the TCG meeting on August 19 and at the meetings of subgroups, Russian delegates and their Donbas proxies had stated they "do not object to the elections being held throughout Ukraine," but demand that the paragraph on the impossibility of holding the vote in the occupied territories be canceled in the Verkhovna Rada resolution.
