MOSCOW, October 17 (RIA Novosti) -The reason behind the tragedy in Eastern Ukraine is that the local population rejected the ultranationalist stand of the new Ukrainian government, which responded with a punitive operation against its own citizens, the Russian envoy to the United Nations said at a security conference in Switzerland.
“The reason behind the current tragedy is the unacceptable attitude of the ultranationalist Kiev’s authorities toward the people of [the country’s] Southeast, who have been denied a right to speak their native language, to live in accordance with their culture, to communicate and cooperate with Russia and Russians,” Russia’s UN representative Alexei Borodavkin said at the Crans Montana Forum on Thursday.
According to the Russian envoy, the people, living in southeastern Ukraine “rejected the ultranationalist lines, imposed by Kiev.” In response, Kiev began its punitive operation which has resulted in loss of thousands lives of civilians in Donbas.
Borodavkin emphasize that it is critically important now for all the parties to the Ukrainian conflict to stick to the Minsk agreements on ceasefire, creation of a buffer zone and especially on launching a comprehensive nationwide political dialogue.
In April, Kiev launched a military operation in Ukraine’s southeast in response to the local residents' refusal to recognize the new Ukrainian government that came to power as a result of a February coup. According to the latest UN report, the operation has claimed the lives of 3,660 and left 8,756 injured.
In early September, two meetings of the Contact Group on Ukraine – Russia, Ukraine, the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) – resulted in a ceasefire agreement and a nine-point memorandum that specified the implementation of the truce between Kiev and southeastern Ukraine's militias.
