US representative for Ukraine Volker: DPR and LPR must be disbanded
US State Department Special Representative for Ukraine Kurt Volker said that the occupation establishments that Russia has created in the Donbas, the DPR and LPR, must be dismantled, because they do not comply with Ukraine’s constitution.
He made a statement to this effect during a panel discussion at the Hudson Institute analytic center, which was broadcast on the institute’s website.
“The so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic are establishments created by Russia to help mask Russia’s role and intensify the ongoing conflict. They must be disbanded,” Volker said.
“There is no place for them in the Ukrainian constitutional order. The Minsk agreements are intended to restore the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, and these establishments need to disappear,” US special representative remarked.
During the panel discussion, Volker also said that once peacekeeping forces have been deployed, it may take as long as six months to organize local elections in the uncontrolled Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
He expressed the hope that the UN peacekeeping mission in the Donbas will be a means to bring about the Minsk agreements. According to him, the peacekeeping mission’s collaboration in the implementation of the Minsk agreements should create a transitional period during which control of the Donbas will be transferred first from Russia to the UN, and then to Ukraine.
Volker called the transfer of control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to the UN an interim phase, “for the time when local elections will be organized and held, when it is safe, when amnesty is ensured to the people who committed crimes, who are an integral part of the conflict, when a special status is established”.
“And then the transition to Ukrainian control,” he continued.
Earlier Volker said that the result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the exact opposite of what Moscow wanted.