EU representative: Russia carries full responsibility for the resolution of the crisis in the Donbas
Russia is responsibile for the resolution of the crisis in the Donbas, Maltese Parliamentary Secretary for the EU Ian Borg said during a session of the European parliament.
“Two years later we see that the Minsk agreement has not been fully implemented. We are seeing a large number of violations of the ceasefire regime, the use of heavy weapons, including artillery and tanks, and restrictions on the activities of the OSCE monitoring mission,” he said.
“Russia bears full responsibility for the resolution of the crisis. We will continue to call on Russia to use its substantive influence on the separatists, which it supports, to make them implements the Minsk agreements,” the representative for Malta’s chairmanship emphasized.
According to Borg, the European Union continues to be deeply concerned about the “presence of Russian military equipment and personnel in the areas held by separatists in Donbas.”
Borg reminded that on February 3, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini had a telephone conversation with the head of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, in which she emphasized the necessity to ensure a complete ceasefire in order to clear the way for implementation of other provisions of the Minsk agreement.
Borg also noted that Ukraine also was the key subject in talks between Mogherini and representatives of the new White House administration in the United States in which the European diplomatic head used the opportunity to convey to Washington a singular European position regarding the sanctions.
"We see the sanctions not as a goal, but as an instrument. When the Minsk agreement are implemented, the appropriate sanctions will be removed,” he said, adding, that since the agreement has not been implemented, the sanctions will remain.