Ukraine will insist on the current structure of the Trilateral Contact Group, consisting of Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE, and will not seek a direct dialogue with the so-called "DNR/LNR". This was stated by Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba at the online discussion "Is the negotiating position of Ukraine changing?", organized by the Atlantic Council on Thursday, - Interfax-Ukraine reports.
"First of all, as I said, Ukraine will insist on the current structure of the Trilateral Contact Group, and this TCG consists of three actors: Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE. Everything else is a subject for internal structuring in the middle of the contact group. But we are not looking for a direct dialogue with Donetsk and Luhansk. But we should interact with them and talk with them only about a certain set of topics in order to implement certain points of the Minsk agreements", - he said.
Kuleba noted that the idea of the advisory council within the framework of the TCG is that Ukraine will not interact with representatives of the so-called "DNR/LNR", but "we make our societies speak and interact with each other".
"As a minister, I will never agree to a direct dialogue between Ukrainian officials and the so-called "representatives of Donetsk and Luhansk". Everything else is a space for the art of diplomacy. But there are certain red lines that I will not cross as the foreign minister or a citizen of Ukraine. And this is one of them", - the minister emphasized.
As previously reported, agreements on the creation of a body (Advisory Council), which records the CADLO subjectivity and Russia finds itself in the status of guarantor-observer were signed in Minsk on March 11. According to the text of the signed document, the Council with the casting vote consists of 10 representatives from Ukraine and CADLO. Russia will be represented by one participant, like the OSCE, Germany and France, as guarantors of the implementation of the Minsk agreements. According to the document signed in Minsk, the criteria and the procedure for selecting Council members from the "DNR/LNR" are determined by "certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts… independently".
Later, Vice Prime Minister for the Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories Oleksii Reznikov stated that the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) to resolve the situation in eastern Ukraine would determine the procedure for selecting representatives to the so-called "advisory council", including from CADLO.