Prystaiko: Kyiv seeking to hold local elections in occupied areas of Donbas

The Ukrainian authorities would like to hold local elections simultaneously across the entire Ukrainian territory, including the areas in Donbas currently not controlled by Kyiv, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko said.

“We accepted the Minsk Agreements five years ago, which includes the organization of elections. In our view, ideally, it would be good to hold elections simultaneously across the whole of our country, which is so far impossible. They [the self-proclaimed “Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics,” or the “DPR” and “LPR”] have already held two fake elections, and we don’t recognize their results. We are proposing now that elections be held simultaneously across the entire territory, including the occupied areas. Let’s see whether this works exclusively in terms of time,” Prystaiko said in a commentary for Interfax on the sidelines of the 16th annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy (YES) in Kyiv on Sept. 13.

At the same time, Prystaiko pointed out that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko agreed on the so-called Steinmeier formula back in 2016. “As people who comply even with something promised by our former presidents, we must implement the Steinmeier formula. We are currently discussing in what form this can be done,” he said.

“It doesn’t contain anything exciting or something for which we could be accused of treachery or victory,” he said.

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