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The Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) plenipotentiary representative at the Minsk talks, LPR Foreign Minister Vladislav Deinego got a chance to speak during the UN Security Council meeting on the Arria formula, which took place via videoconference.
The meeting was called to discuss the situation in Ukraine, with representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) also in attendance.
The DPR representative was Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova.
“The UNSC Arria-Formula meeting on the implementation of the Minsk Package of Measures on the Settlement in Ukraine will take place on December 2 DPR Foreign Minister Natalia Nikonorova and LPR Foreign Minister Vladislav Deinego, both representing their countries in the Contact Group, will be speaking.”
The “Arria-formula meetings” are very informal, confidential gatherings which enable Security Council members to have a frank and private exchange of views, within a flexible procedural framework.
There were several opponents of the event taking place, namely Ukraine which boycotted and didn’t attend. Others who didn’t attend were the US, the UK, Estonia, France Germany and Belgium.
“This meeting was a clear attempt to present a false and misleading storyline regarding the conflict in eastern Ukraine,” the United States, Britain and Estonia said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Germany and France also opposed archiving the discussion on the UN website, and it even being held at all.
Germany and France have objected to broadcasting on the UN website of an informal meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the conflict in Ukraine at the initiative of Moscow, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vassily Nebenzia said.
“We are particularly appalled by the efforts of our German and French colleagues, the Normandy format participants, to boycott this meeting under ridiculous pretext that the format of the meeting does not fall under Normandy Format. Moreover, we know that they worked tirelessly with delegations to dissuade them from participating. Not only this is shameful, but it also goes contrary to the established Security Council practice whereby Arria-Formula meeting are not blocked or sabotaged whatever the subject is,” said Vassily Nebenzia.
“Who benefits? What do Paris and Berlin get by trying to “silence” the Donbass people, to prevent the dissemination on the UN site of true information, which is neither watered down nor perverted to please Kiev about what is happening in the process of implementing the Minsk Agreements? And how does this fit in with their image as “lawkeepers” and defenders of freedom of expression? How can one not remember the existence of this double standard, it is difficult to find a more blatant example! “wrote the Russian Permanent Representation to the UN on its Telegram channel.
Russia’s permanent representative at the UN, Vasily Nebenzia, introduced the event by denouncing Kiev’s attempts to make people believe that the only real negotiating platform is the Normandy Format and not the Minsk Format. This is yet another attempt by Ukraine to avoid having to negotiate directly with the DPR and LPR, and to make people believe in its fantasy of war with Russia by agreeing to negotiate only with Moscow, which is a total violation of the Minsk Agreements.
The Russian representation at the UN explained that the attitude of France and Germany regarding this meeting has proved that there is nothing to be expected from them as guarantors of the Minsk Agreements. And the future of meetings in the Normandy Format is also severely questioned.
“As for the Germans and the French, they showed their true face in this situation as eloquently as possible. They do not care about the Minsk process, nor about the Donbass people, nor about the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as a whole. All they have to do is to protect their “protégés” in Kiev from the truth, to support at all costs their unfounded assertions about the infamous “Russian aggression” (by the way, we will also talk about this). They are not mediators and there is nothing to be expected from them, now it has become absolutely obvious. The masks have come off, gentlemen! The question is whether the Normandy Format will survive such a blow. After all, they can get together and fantasize about the situation in Ukraine without us. And they don’t need the truth or a real settlement!“ concluded the Russian representation at the UN.
Regardless of what happened, the LPR Foreign Minister Vladislav Deinego did speak. He said that on April 14, 2014, after the start of the so-called anti-terrorist operation, the formation of “volunteer” and punitive battalions began and their transfer to the Donbass along with the army units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“On April 15, at the entrance to Luhansk, local residents practically with their bare hands stopped the advance of a convoy of armored vehicles of the Ukrainian armed forces: six armored personnel carriers and vehicles with towed 122-mm D-30 howitzers were heading from Dnepropetrovsk. Kiev transferred these weapons for use against the unarmed civilian population, “the LPR representative emphasized, adding that” in April 2014, in the cities of the Luhansk region, citizens were arrested everywhere simply because they opposed the Maidan and the armed coup. ”
The head of the LPR Foreign Ministry noted that “in these circumstances, on April 27, 2014, at popular gatherings, the creation of the Lugansk People’s Republic was initiated”, “it was decided to hold a nationwide referendum on May 11, 2014 on the territory of the Lugansk region on the issue of supporting the state independence of the Lugansk People’s Republic”. Moreover, “the presidium of the Luhansk regional council of the sixth convocation, unlike its colleagues from the Donetsk region, at that time did not run away anywhere and on May 5, 2014 even adopted a statement in support of this referendum.”
“In the following days, deputies of the LPR People’s Council, a representative body, were elected by direct voting at gatherings of territorial communities in cities and regions. Since then, the process of forming a militia from scattered self-defense units and maintaining law and order, spontaneously formed in the territories in the previous period, has begun,” the foreign minister continued.
Deinego noted that after the election on May 25, 2014, at the illegally scheduled early elections of the President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, instead of the promised peace, almost immediately the armed formations of Ukraine unleashed the first battles in the territory of the LPR.
“Against the civilian population, organized into self-defense units, Ukraine sent battalions of the National Guard, formed from the activists of the “Maidan ”, and punitive battalions, which consisted mainly of criminals convicted of serious crimes and early released under the obligation to enter the war against Donbass … These armed formations were supported by aviation, tanks, artillery and tactical missile systems of the armed forces of Ukraine,” Deinego emphasized.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs noted that one of the first particularly brutal airstrikes was the shelling of the center of the city of Luhansk on June 2, 2014 from a Su-25 aircraft with unguided rockets. The air raid killed eight civilians, including five women. Three more people later died from their wounds. 28 people were injured, mostly on the street in front of the building.
“The use of heavy weapons and aviation by the armed forces of Ukraine in the war against the population of Donbass has become systemic. The aircraft of the Ukrainian Armed Forces delivered strikes almost every day. Here are some of them: July 2, 2014 – Stanitsa Luganskaya, 12 people died, including a 5-year-old child; August 28 – the city of Alchevsk – 2 people were killed,” he concluded.
This was met by largely no response at all, notably there is no coverage, whatsoever, in MSM of the event or the significant chance that the LPR and DPR were given to speak at the UNSC platform.
Deinego’s speech followed by a speech by Mikhayl Pogrebinsky, director and founder of the Centre for Political Studies and Conflict Resolution in Kiev. The latter said he was uncomfortable to be in some way the only representative of Ukraine in this meeting because of Kiev’s boycott. He gave a history of the various documents making up the Minsk Package of Measures and tried to explain why their implementation was blocked in order to help restart the negotiations.
Ukraine’s official stance on the matter is the following: it considers that it “thwarted Russia’s attempt to legitimize representatives of the occupied Donbas representatives using the Arria formula meeting of the United Nations Security Council.”
“The meeting [Arria formula meeting of the United Nations Security Council] will be boycotted not only by Ukraine but also by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Estonia and Belgium. That is, it will be boycotted by all OSCE participating states that are members of the Security Council, except for the Russian Federation. This is an important signal because the OSCE takes part in the negotiation process within the Trilateral Contact Group,” Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba said in a commentary to Ukrinform.
He added that Russian PR stunt would not even be broadcast on official UN resources due to the principled position of Ukraine’s partners in the UN Security Council.
“This is a clear response to Russia’s attempts to manipulate international platforms and formats to promote its propaganda,” he said.
Kuleba also thanked international partners, including Germany and France as the Normandy format members, for their strong solidarity in support of Ukraine.
In short, Ukraine has already totally sabotaged the Minsk Agreements, which it refuses to implement, whatsoever. Following this UNSC fiasco, Germany and France are also set on following the agenda and sabotaged the Normandy Format, proving that they are incredibly biased towards one direction. The peace process currently appears as an illusion, and a restoration of hostilities in Eastern Ukraine is likely just a matter of time, with Kiev likely pulling the trigger after a pretext of some sort.
After all, with the presumed support of the US and the UK, and with France and Germany showing that they have no political will, Kiev is likely to start acting with impunity in regard to Eastern Ukraine.
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the Ukraine is similar to a pretend nation comprised of various primitive tribes that are unable to cooperate; they are more interested in self destruction, corruption and fake news than creating a real nation
CIA trolls, ukrop/baltic nazis are crying and raging ??
I hope those bitches try something,Russia will crush them.
They are like cockroaches. They sided with the nazis in WWII killing their own citizens and now they do it again. They are really pushing their luck…
Want to know whats really funny?those Nazi pigs they admire looked down on Ukrainians as untermench,.many are not worth saving,many Poles are the same,i never hear them say anything about Germans even though six million Poles were killed from the Nazi invasion. and Warsaw was left in ruins.
Indeed. Spot on. Aside from that if not for Russia neither, Poland nor the Baltics or Ukraine would exist today. Russia let them keep their country, culture and language, those evil ruskies…how dare they…. how dare they…. Meanwhile baltics and Ukraine treat minorities as trash, they arent even allowed to use their own language. Western values… Another fun fact that even today baltic nazis and poletards look down on ukropnazis, they treat them as if they were mentally handicapped people. To be honest I cant blame them, once you realize the Ukrainian flag and the Down Syndrome Awarness ribbon are one and the same everything adds up. Wonder when ukropnazis will realize they are nothing more than useful idiots for them, cannonfodder…
EU is good at talking the talk, diplomacy meetings and to make references to how different procedures should be or were not followed by the counterpart, filibuster speeches and raising questions.