Russian
President Vladimir Putin says that Ukraine will be able to retake its eastern
border with Russia only after constitutional reform has been introduced,
according to Putin's official website kremlin.ru.
"Paragraph 9 [of the Minsk
II Protocol] – reinstatement of full control of the state border by the
government of Ukraine based on the Ukrainian law on constitutional reform by
the end of 2015, provided that Paragraph 11 has been fulfilled, which
stipulates constitutional reform," Putin cited the Minsk peace agreements
in an interview with German
daily Bild, which was recorded in Sochi on January 5.
"Consequently, the constitutional reform and political processes
are to be implemented first, followed by confidence building on the basis of
those reforms and the completion of all processes, including the border
closure," he said.
Putin insists that changes to the Ukrainian constitution should be
permanent, as is stipulated in the Minsk agreements.
"The Ukrainian Government introduced the law on the special status of those territories, a law that
had been adopted earlier, into the
transitional provisions. But this law, which they incorporated in the
Constitution, was adopted for the duration of three years only. Two years have
already passed. When we met in Paris, both the German Chancellor and the French
President agreed that this law should be changed and included in the
Constitution on a permanent basis. Both the President of France and the
Chancellor of Germany confirmed that. Moreover, the current version of the
Constitution has not even been approved and the law has not become permanent.
How can demands be made on Moscow to do what in fact must be done in line with
the decisions of our colleagues in Kyiv?" he wondered.
As UNIAN reported earlier, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
announced late in 2015 that the Minsk agreements would be extended to 2016.
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