“The cancellation of [anti-terrorist operations] was one of the conditions to postpone the elections. This issue is currently being discussed in the framework of the Contact Group,” the source said.
Earlier in the day, Donetsk and Lugansk agreed to postpone local elections until 2016.
Ukraine is expected to hold local elections on October 25 in the rest of the country.
Kiev has welcomed the postponement, with a representative of Kiev’s negotiator in the trilateral Ukrainian reconciliation talks saying that the election results of November 2014 needed to be cancelled to return to a legal framework.
Last week, Paris hosted a meeting of the Normandy Four on Ukrainian reconciliation, comprising leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany. Following the meeting, Paris and Berlin announced that the sides had agreed on the necessity to adjourn the election in Ukraine’s east.
The self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine have repeatedly stated that the decision to hold elections independently from Kiev was made after the Ukrainian government proceeded to adopt a law on local elections without consulting them in advance, which contradicts the Minsk peace deal.
The Minsk deal, hammered out by the Normandy Four in February, stipulates constitutional changes, as well as a ceasefire and weapons withdrawals.
Ukraine’s southeast has been engulfed in a conflict since April 2014, when the Kiev authorities launched a military operation against independence supporters in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new Ukrainian government which came to power as the result of a coup.
