The head of Donetsk Regional State Administration, Serhiy Taruta, has criticized a law passed by Verkhovna Rada, which assigns a special status to certain territories in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, according to Donbass Novosti, a local online news outlet.
“What kind of formation will it be? Where is the border of this formation within Donetsk region? We will have two Donetsk regions, or one Donetsk region inside of which there will be some incomprehensible association, the DPR and the LPR (the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics)? The DPR and the LPR are terrorist organizations, or are they not? What is the timeframe for surrendering weapons? We have not seen that either. When will the border close and how? This is not clear either. What are the laws all bodies of power will be guided by? Will there be central government bodies or only local ones? How will the judicial system and all enforcement bodies operate? And so forth, and so on. Education, the education program. This document does not have answers to that,” he told a press conference on Tuesday.
Taruta further suggested that the document, which must answer the question about the peace process, must be signed and guaranteed “at least by the Geneva quintet, and it must be made clear that the parties assume responsibility.”
In particular, the border issue remains open, he said. “Will the border remain open or not? Or will they continue crossing it as they do today, back and forth, as if in a taxi?” Taruta asked.
“Now, we have several districts, which are located, shall we say, with the capital of these districts which are located in Novoazovsk, in Telmanove, and partly beyond them. Which laws will the second part and first part live by? The first says: ‘No going to school, we are not allowed, it is dangerous, the DPR.’ And the school that is near Mariupol, children there, from the neighboring street, have to go to the city’s school. Why can’t they go (to their local school)? ‘No, the DPR prohibits us.’ This is a very big issue. And if you go down the list, I have at least 50 of them,” the governor said.
“I did not expect all that,” he said.
“Of course, the emotional element is very large. From the viewpoint of how they sold and ‘merged’ us, where are we, in Russia, in Ukraine, what were we fighting for, why did we build all these structures? And why did our boys die and what for, if we proposed peace talks back in May. We will broaden them, the roundtable is big involving all of the Donbas but not those who, on behalf of Donbas, and helped by automatic rifle, machineguns and grenade launchers, have usurped power to themselves on behalf of the people. No one authorized them,” Taruta said.
He also expressed his bewilderment over elections and amnesty: “Local elections, how? At gunpoint? It is clear what elections we will have. Or will we not? And what if there are hostilities tomorrow. They did occur today. Does this fall under the amnesty clause or will it not fall under the amnesty clause? There is nothing about it.”
“We were really shocked by this document. And we have so many questions, I think this is definitely not appeasing Mariupol,” said the head of the Donetsk regional administration.
For the peace treaty to be signed, it should have signatures of representatives of all guarantor countries that have real impact on these processes, the governor said.
It was reported that at its session held behind closed doors last Tuesday Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada passed a president’s bill introducing a special self-administration regime for specific districts in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions for a three-year period and calling early local elections in these regions on Dec. 7, 2014.
The Verkhovna Rada also passed a bill guaranteeing no criminal prosecution for certain categories for persons who committed criminal offenses between Feb. 22, 2014, and the effective date of the law in those parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions where the antiterrorist operation was taking place.
