“Russia is not and has never been a mediator in this conflict. The United States calls on Russia to abandon its unproductive and harmful approach to the conflict that it has sparked and to withdraw its troops and equipment from eastern Ukraine,” Donegan said.
According to him, Russia is trying to force Ukraine to negotiate with representatives of the terrorist groups “DPR” and “LPR”.
“Instead of acting in good faith and taking concrete actions to improve the lives of the civilian population living in the territories that it [РФ] temporarily controls, Russia has used TCG to thwart progress, Donegan said. “We all see Russia’s ruse in trying to force Ukraine to enter into direct negotiations with Moscow’s puppet forces.”
The US Charge d’Affaires to the OSCE added that “Russia’s obstructionist approach to peace negotiations” reveals its true motive for inciting violence in eastern Ukraine “-” a senseless attempt to obstruct Ukraine’s freely chosen path to full integration with the Euro-Atlantic community“.
Immediately after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia launched an armed aggression in eastern Ukraine. The fighting is between the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the one hand and the Russian army and Russian-backed militants who control parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the other. Officially, the Russian Federation does not recognize its invasion of Ukraine, despite the facts and evidence presented by Ukraine.
According to the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, more than 14 thousand people died during the conflict.
Negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in Donbass are being held in the TCG (Ukraine, Russia, OSCE), as well as in the Normandy format – with the participation of representatives of Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia.
July 22, 2020 TCG agreed on a full and comprehensive ceasefire in Donbass since midnight on July 27. At the beginning of 2021, the situation in Donbass worsened. Ukrainian side regularly reports violations by the fighters of the ceasefire
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