HAMBURG, July 7. /TASS/. Russia hopes that the new U.S. representative on Ukraine will soon visit Moscow. This was stated to journalists on Friday, Minister of foreign Affairs of Russia Sergey Lavrov following the meeting of presidents of Russia and USA Vladimir Putin and Donald trump.
“When discussing Ukraine, the U.S. side announced that they had appointed a special representative for the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis, the Minister said. – We expect that he will arrive in Moscow in the near future.”
Lavrov also said that “the two leaders agreed to create a channel between the representative of the Russian Federation and the representative of the USA in order to use these features, which have the United States, and to promote settlement on the basis of the Minsk agreements, taking into account and building on the potential that lies in the contact group in the Normandy format”.
According to the Minister, the Western countries aware of the need to put pressure on the government in Kiev to implement the Minsk agreements.
“All interested in the fact that the parties to the Minsk agreement, and Ukraine – the main party of the Minsk agreements, did what is written there,’ he said. – Our Western partners, we feel it, understand the need for more exposure to this process, which is in locked state”.
“I do not recall that the President of the trump offered some other plan. And today’s conversation this morning with [Secretary of state] Rex Tillerson also revealed some waste from the Minsk agreements”, – Lavrov said, responding to a question about how did the American side, a new approach to the Ukrainian settlement.
According to him, there is a common interest in advancing along the path, which is represented in the Minsk agreements.
The Minsk agreement
The basis for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbass are the so-called Minsk agreements, which involve not only the cease-fire, the withdrawal of heavy weapons, Amnesty, the resumption of economic relations, but also carrying out a deep constitutional reform in Ukraine, the result of which should be the decentralization of power taking into account the special status of separate districts of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
However, until now, the plan remains unrealized. The Ukrainian side has completely abandoned the implementation of the political clauses of the agreement, citing unresolved safety issues. Not carried out constitutional reform, to be enacted the law on the special status of the region adopted the law on elections in the Donbass. Instead, the Ukrainian side insists on the transfer of her land border with Russia, although it should happen, according to the Minsk agreement, only after the election.