French President Francois Hollande will urge the removal of anti-Russian sanctions and he will do his best to achieve this if the settlement of the Ukrainian crisis progresses in future.
The French head of state reminded that all the points of the Minsk Agreement should be implemented before the end of the year, including the organization of local elections, the adoption of laws on autonomy and decentralization of the south-east of Ukraine, RIA Novosti reports.
"If this process is completed, I will take measures to remove the sanctions," Hollande promised.
The French President does actually have some tools that would allow him to achieve the lifting of sanctions, the Director of the Center for Political Information Alexey Mukhin said in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza.
‘‘The consensus of all EU countries is necessary to continue support for the anti-Russian regime of sanctions. If it does continue, then the sanctions regime will be automatically removed. Francois Hollande knows what he is talking about," he explained.
Another thing is that compliance with the Minsk agreement depends not only and not so much on Russia, the expert said.
"Unfortunately, the statement of Francois Hollande doesn’t contain information about which country is guilty of non-compliance with the Minsk agreement. To put it mildly, it is unfair to put all the responsibility for this on Russia. Because Kiev is significantly responsible for compliance with the Minsk Agreements. But, as we know, Kiev has done little in this direction,’’ Mukhin concluded.
The Deputy Dean of the Department of World Economy and International Relations of the National Research University - Higher School of Economics, Andrey Suzdaltsev, believes that Hollande can’t affect the sanctions policy of the European Union.
"The decisions in the EU should be taken consistently. 28 countries should support the lifting of sanctions. It should be understood that Poland and the Baltic States will never vote for this. So it's just Hollande’s good wishes," he noted.
