Negotiations to resolve the situation in Donbass in video format are turning into an almost useless television show. This was stated by the Deputy Secretary of State of the Security Council of Belarus Vladimir Archakov.
For more than a year now, due to the coronavirus pandemic, negotiations on a settlement in Donbass have been held in the format of a video conference.
“Belarus has always adhered to and adheres to peaceful ways of resolving absolutely any contradictions … As for the conflict in Donbass, we continue to express our confidence that it can be resolved exclusively by diplomatic measures,” Archakov said in an interview with the Belarus 1 TV channel. was aired on April 18.
According to him, Belarus sees no alternative to the Minsk agreements. The Deputy State Secretary of the Security Council noted that the country is still ready to provide a platform for the work of the trilateral contact group, because the video format “is turning into some kind of practically useless television show.”
Archakov added that Kiev could behave more correctly in relation to Belarus – from there “shouts are heard” that the republic is almost going to invade the territory of Ukraine.
“I will never believe that the Ukrainian military or special services are so incompetent not to distinguish the noise of a timber truck from the movement of a column of armored vehicles,” he said.
Nevertheless, Archakov stressed, Minsk is ready to take part in any format “in the settlement of the emerging and aggravating conflict situation” in Ukraine.
On April 6, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov said that the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on Donbass after the end of quarantine will not participate in negotiations in Minsk due to “mistrust of this territory.”
Kiev has already offered to postpone negotiations from Minsk. So, in the summer of 2020, the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the contact group on Donbass, Leonid Kravchuk, said that due to protests in connection with the results of the elections in Belarus, he allows the transfer of the platform for negotiations on a settlement from Minsk to Sweden.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy then said that he did not consider it advisable to change Minsk as the venue for negotiations on a settlement in Donbass due to the situation that developed after the elections in the republic.
Since 2014, Kiev has been conducting a military operation against the residents of Donbass, who refused to recognize the results of the coup d’état and the new government in Ukraine. Conflict settlement issues are discussed in the Minsk (TCG) and Normandy formats.
The Trilateral Contact Group is a group of authorized representatives of Ukraine, the OSCE and Russia, formed in the summer of 2014 as a working body to resolve operational issues requiring interaction between the opposing parties to the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, including issues related to the implementation of decisions adopted in the Normandy format (Germany, France, Russia, Ukraine).