Certain comments made in an interview by Deputy Head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Minsk Trilateral Contact Group Vitold Fokin do not reflect Ukraine’s official position. This was stated by Head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak.
According to him, most of the positions expressed by Vitold Fokin, in fact, reflect the provisions of the first and second Minsk agreements. "Let's separate the personal position from the position of the delegation. Vitold Fokin has just joined the negotiation process and is getting a sense of the issue. Today the Ukrainian party is trying to mitigate or apply exclusively within the national interests of Ukraine some odious and ambiguous formulations, which for some reason the previous government agreed to," Andriy Yermak said.
He stressed that the amnesty could not apply to those who committed war crimes, took hostages, tortured and killed prisoners, were engaged in human trafficking, participated in the financing of terrorism and committed some other serious crimes.
The Head of the President's Office also noted that the Minsk agreements and the proposals of the Ukrainian delegation to finalize the bill on the peculiarities of local self-government in ORDLO do not provide for a special status for the whole of Donbas - only for the temporarily occupied areas.
"There are clear red lines, which have been repeatedly outlined by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Therefore, the position of the Ukrainian delegation in the Minsk TCG is fully in line with the national interests of Ukraine," Andriy Yermak stressed.