Kiev does not intend to comply with the Minsk Accords on its own, it should be impelled to do so, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the Russia-1 TV channel on Sunday.
"If it (Ukraine) is left alone with itself, with its conscience - of course, it won’t do anything. It needs to be impelled, the Normandy format was created precisely for this purpose, but so far Berlin and Paris have been neglecting their obligations. We are drawing their attention to the fact that this has to be done," he said.
The Russian side has repeatedly stressed that it is not a party to the internal Ukrainian conflict in Donbass and consistently supports a complete and unfailing implementation of the Minsk Accords that it signed as a mediator in the process of the peaceful settlement.
The Minsk Package of Measures (Minsk-2), signed by the participants of the Contact Group on February 12, 2015, is the foundation for settling the conflict in the region. The document, in addition to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of military equipment, provides for a profound constitutional reform in Ukraine with the resulting decentralization of power, taking into account the special status of the Donetsk and Lugansk Regions as well as the holding of elections there. This plan has not been implemented to this day, including due to the position of the Ukrainian side which, contrary to the order established by the Minsk Accords, refuses to implement political points until security issues are settled.
At the highest level, Russia has repeatedly expressed its adherence to the 2015 Minsk Accords which it considers the only way of settling the internal conflict in Ukraine.
