DONETSK, November 5 (RIA Novosti) – The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics in eastern Ukraine claim Kiev’s reneging on the special status of the two regions harms the peace process and changes the Minsk protocol and should be reviewed, according to a joint statement released Wednesday.
“The law passed on the special status, as well as the law on amnesty that was agreed on with the DPR and LPR are obligatory to Kiev. This has been set in the September 5 Minsk protocol. Now, after the unilateral decision on cancelling these laws, the September 5 Minsk protocol has virtually been wiped out by the Kiev clique,” the statement reads.
“It is obvious that [the protocol] needs to be reviewed. The DPR and LPR cannot operate on the basis of a document from which [Ukrainian President Petro] Poroshenko has removed important points. We are prepared to work on a new edition of the protocol,” the statement continues.
According to the statement, the self-proclaimed republics "strongly reaffirm the strict implementation of the September 19 Minsk memorandum on ceasefire, as well as our commitment to the Minsk peace process as a whole. In the upcoming days, the popularly elected heads of DPR and LPR will name their plenipotentiaries for the Minsk talks."
Following a February coup in Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk residents established people's republics that later declared independence in a move that led to the escalation of the Ukrainian crisis. In April, Ukrainian forces launched a military operation against the regions' independence supporters.
A law that grants special statuses to parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was passed by the Ukrainian parliament on September 16, following a September 5 ceasefire agreement between Kiev and independence supporters in eastern Ukraine. The law also stipulates that local elections are to take place in those regions in December. However, the self-proclaimed republics held their own elections for the heads of local governments and representatives of legislative bodies on Sunday.
