MOSCOW, January 28. /TASS/. The Ukrainian parliament’s decisions to declare Russia an "aggressor country" and to initiate the process of declaring the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as "terrorist organizations" are tantamount to severing the Minsk Accords and shutting the windows of opportunity for ending hostilities in the south-east of Ukraine, polled experts have told TASS.
"These resolutions by the Verkhovna Rada are a show-off act, an attempt to internationalize the conflict. Kiev’s aim is to issue a message to the external forces, the United States and the European Union countries first and foremost, to the effect Ukraine is in a state of war with Russia, which allegedly supports terrorists, and to achieve the deployment of a NATO-led UN peace-making contingent in the country. It is not accidental that US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs said on Wednesday that NATO should hurry to deploy command posts and create a rapid reaction force in the European countries bordering on Ukraine, the president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, Konstantin Sivkov, told TASS.
"The Ukrainian parliament is trying to create moral, psychological and legal conditions for another wave of mobilization and for finding excuses for the Ukrainian armed forces’ attempts to destroy the Luhansk and Donetsk republics. Under the established international practice, holding talks with terrorists is prohibited. It is pretty clear that Kiev has never complied with the Minsk accords on the pullout of heavy weapons from the disengagement line between the militias and Ukrainian army units and has no intention of complying with them in the future.
"Kiev used last December’s armistice agreement for regrouping forces and building up military muscle. According to the Donetsk Republic’s Defense Ministry Kiev has moved against Donetsk and Luhansk about 28,000 troops and mercenaries, 300 tanks, about 900 armoured personnel carriers and about 130 multiple launchers GRAD. It is not accidental that at the January 22 meeting of the National Defense and Security Council President Petro Poroshenko declared that the Ukrainian army was now strong enough "to give the enemy a good punch."
"By taking steps to declare the Donetsk and Luhansk republics as terrorist organizations and Russia as an ‘aggressor country,’ the Verkhovna Rada in fact shuts the door to negotiations in the Kiev-Donbas format, to Russia’s participation in the Minsk Contact Group and to attempts at settling the crisis in the Normandy format, because Russia does not recognize itself as a party to the military conflict. Kiev has in fact steered the Minsk talks on armistice into a blind alley," the president of the National Strategy Institute, member of the governmental military-industrial commission Mikhail Remizov, has told TASS.
"In the current situation the widely-used diplomatic phrase the conflict in the south-east of Ukraine has no military solution is being converted into its opposite. Kiev now rules out a peace settlement of the crisis and puts the stake on a military 'anti-terrorist operation' in Donbas, launched back last spring, on wiping out the Donetsk and Luhansk republics with reliance on its Western sponsors," Remizov believes.
"The Ukrainian parliament’s latest decision was prompted from the United States. It reflects Washington’s aim at provoking a clash between Ukraine and Russia with a view to Moscow’s eventual isolation and collapse of the Russian economy. Obama makes no secret of that," State Duma member from the United Russia party, Vyacheslav Nikonov, has told TASS.
"Kiev’s actual refusal to settle the crisis by peaceful means is leading to a further aggravation of the situation in the south-east. In this way the current Ukrainian authorities will most probably speed up their own funeral."
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