Ukraine in Arabic | Russia-Ukraine-OSCE group will meet again on Friday
KYIV/Ukraine in Arabic/ According to Belarusian Foreign Ministry, Next meeting of trilateral contact group on Ukraine is expected to be held in Minsk on Friday.
"Such a meeting is planned," a Foreign Ministry said. At the same time, he said the venue and time of the meeting are currently unknown.
The Russian embassy in Minsk told Interfax: "We currently have no information that Russian official Mikhail Zurabov is arriving in Minsk tomorrow."
Previously the contact group on Ukraine gathered in Minsk on September 5. It agreed a protocol on immediate steps to be taken, such as ceasefire and the exchange of prisoners of war between Kiev’s forces and the militias of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics.
Delegates from the authorities in Kiev, the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, the OSCE and Russia took part in the talks.
Last Monday, September 8, Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko discussed steps that would facilitate further peaceful settlement in the south-east of Ukraine.
On September 17, Poroshenko proposed a special self-rule status for the independence-seeking Donetsk and Luhansk regions and the free use of the Russian language there.
The draft law he submitted to the parliament calls for local elections in the region, commonly known as Donbass, on November 9, 2014.
It guarantees the use of the Russian or any other language “in public and private life, the study and support of the Russian or any other language, its free development and equal status”, the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda quoted the draft law as saying.
Kiev will also guarantee that the persons who participated in the fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions would not be prosecuted.