Minsk accords voluntarily signed by Kiev, do not involve coercion, senior Russian diplomat says – world

MOSCOW, September 1. / TASS /. Compliance with the Minsk settlement agreements in eastern Ukraine does not require any coercion, this document was voluntarily coordinated and signed by Kiev, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday speaking to the students and teaching staff at MGIMO University of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“The Minsk agreements do not provide for any constraint, they were voluntarily coordinated and voluntarily signed and unanimously approved by the UN Security Council, thus becoming an integral part of international law,” he said. said in response to a question of whether Moscow can force Kiev to reach a peaceful resolution within the framework of the Minsk accords.

“And when the Ukrainian state both under the [former president Pyotr] Poroshenko and less [Vladimir] Zelensky is doing everything to refrain from implementing the Minsk agreements, we draw the attention of those who developed them with us, especially Germany, France, but also other Western countries who are trying to shift the blame from the Kiev regime in all respects, ”he added.

The senior Russian diplomat stressed that by saying that Kiev wants to prohibit itself from implementing this document, he means a whole series of laws which “firstly, essentially, prohibit the Russian language, secondly, prohibit the granting of any special authority to the territories which have proclaimed themselves the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, forbid to coordinate with them the parameters of the holding of local elections there. “” And all this is the very essence of the Minsk agreements, “said he explained.

The Russian Foreign Minister added that the issue was raised during recent talks in Moscow between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We have shown our German colleagues the legislative bans that Zelensky approves for himself in order to later find excuses for his complete inability to fulfill what is demanded, in fact, by all countries,” Lavrov stressed. “Because the lack of alternatives to the Minsk agreements to settle the crisis in the Donbass is proclaimed by all without exception”, he concluded.