Poroshenko, Timoshenko plans for Donbass have no future, says Ukraine politician

KIEV, February 12. /TASS/. Ukrainian presidential hopefuls’ plans for the settlement in Donbass have no future, the chairman of the “Opposition Platform – For Life” Political Council, Viktor Medvedchuk, said on Tuesday.

“If you listen to Mrs. [Yulia] Timoshenko, you will see that the far it goes, the messier it gets. She says it is necessary to return to the Budapest Memorandum, and to those who signed it, and make them compel Russia into having peace established [in Donbass],” the politician told Russia’s Channel One on Tuesday, dismissing the above as “pure nonsense”.

In case President Pyotr Poroshenko is re-elected for a second term, he pledges to establish peace in Donbass through strengthening the army, strengthening diplomatic and sanction pressure on Russia, the Ukrainian politician went on to say.

“So all this action on the plan looks approximately like this – it is necessary to see that the international public, Europe and the US first of all, compel the Russian president into implementing the Minsk accords, which, as they say, have certain points that Russia must implement. I can tell you that there are no such points there, and this policy is counterproductive, it has not yielded and will not yield results. However, this is the stance the current president emanates from,” Medvedchuk said.

Kiev must come to an agreement with the self-proclaimed Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics as well as with Russia, which has influence on the republics, Medvedchuk believes. “We must agree with Donetsk and Lugansk, we must come to an agreement with Russia for one simple reason – it currently exerts influence on Donetsk and Lugansk, including in the Normandy Four, it can be guarantor of the agreements, and I insist on it that all negotiations be conducted in this quadrangle,” he added.

Earlier, Medvedchuk said he was in favor of federalization of Ukraine, but admitted, however, that the Ukrainian constitution prevents this. Federalization “is the only remedy against disintegration of the country,” he said.

Ukraine’s presidential election is scheduled for March 31. The Ukrainian Central Election Commission has registered 37 candidates.

According to the latest opinion polls, Ukrainian showman Vladimir Zelensky has the best chances of winning the presidential election. The second and third places are shared by Yulia Timoshenko, leader of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) Party, and incumbent President Pyotr Poroshenko followed by Yuri Boiko, leader of the Opposition Platform – for Life, and Anatoly Gritsenko, leader of the Civil Initiative party.