NEW YORK (Sputnik) — In August, representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics (DPR and LPR) in the eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region said they supported an initiative to extend the February Minsk agreements on Ukraine reconciliation through 2016.
"[The extensions does not make sense], because each side of the Normandy Format should meet its commitments as they are outlined in the Minsk package. Someone fulfills them, and someone for some reason doesn’t, so no need to wriggle out of carrying out the obligations," Klimkin said, commenting on his stance on the Minsk deal extension.
"One should simply implement commitments and not someday, but right now, because if they are fulfilled someday, we will slowly come to a frozen conflict," the minister stressed.
Ukraine will hold parliamentary elections on October 25. But the country's eastern Donetsk and Lugansk breakaway regions plan to hold local elections on October 18 and November 1 respectively.
The Normandy Four was created in 2014 to secure a peaceful settlement to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. In February, the quartet leaders worked out the Minsk peace deal, later signed by the Kiev forces and the militias of the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region.
Under the deal, both constitutional reforms aimed at decentralizing power in Ukraine and local elections in Donbass must be concluded before the end of 2015.
