Yesterday the meeting of the Working Group on Humanitarian Issues was held in accordance with the temporary regulations and lasted over three hours. However, due to the fault of the Ukrainian side, a constructive dialogue did not take place. Negotiators from Kiev were unable to provide specific information on any of the agenda items. Moreover, they deliberately avoided discussing global problems, spending negotiation time on empty rhetoric and lengthy discussions about small technical details.
For example, the representatives of Ukraine did not comment on the topic of creating a joint mechanism for identifying unidentified victims of the conflict. Instead, they voiced their vision of sewing working clothes, in which members of search groups should work when exhuming the remains of those killed on the contact line.
By a similar principle, the Ukrainian side blocked the issue of providing security guarantees during search and exhumation works.
We also did not receive any new data from the representatives of Kiev on the progress of the procedural “cleansing” of the participants of the previous exchanges. In particular, my question remained unanswered about when President Zelensky will finally sign a decree for mercy of 10 citizens transferred to the DPR in 2019-2020.
The relevant documents, according to the assurances of representatives of Ukraine in the Humanitarian Group, have been on his table for more than six months. But so far, Mr. Zelensky has not been able to find time to fulfil the obligations under the Minsk process and to exempt the people detained in connection with the conflict in Donbass from prosecution. At the same time, nothing prevented him from pardoning more than 30 veterans of the so-called ATO, convicted of criminal offenses, for “special merits”. The corresponding decree was signed in October this year and people who participated in the genocide of the Donbass population, and then broke the law on the territory of their own state, have already been released.
I am compelled to state that the Ukrainian side made a stalemate of the negotiations on the humanitarian direction, which is acquiring a chronic character. I believe that the destructive position of the representatives of Ukraine is a direct reflection of the policy of official Kiev, which finds the complete blockade of Donbass and the lack of progress at the negotiating table beneficial.
