Ukraine Seeks a Trilateral Meeting To Treat Donbass Escalation

The Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Iryna Vereshchuk announced that Kiev is at total disposal to do whatever is needed for restoring the ceasefire in Donbass, she noted that they count with the support of a trilateral contact group meeting scheduled for Saturday.

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"We hope that such a meeting will take place tomorrow. We are ready to work, ready for dialogue, ready to do everything so that the ceasefire continues, the ceasefire regime is resumed, and the civilian population does not suffer," said Vereshchuk during a briefing. She stressed that the Ukrainian government requested Germany and France representatives to the OSCE SMM, aimed to assess Donbass' situation.

"We need independent verification. That is why we turned to our Normandy participants and ask Germany and France to resolve the issue of providing their representatives to the OSCE SMM, who will independently assess the situation, as soon as possible. We are ready and allow the OSCE mission to all points that are only needed," disclosed the Minister.

Only if Kiev has concrete proposals and is open to dialogue the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) will hold a group meeting. According to a Moscow source, Russia is ready to hold the urgent Contact Group meeting, that Kyiv and Donbas should schedule. The trilateral contact meeting is composed of Ukrainian representatives, Russia, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), founded in 2014 with the purpose of facilitating a diplomatic resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Following authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics said that Kiev's forces had started shelling of their territories, the tensions in Donbass' territory have escalated considerably. Denis Pushilin, head of the DPR said that Ukrainian President Zelensky was planning to order an invasion of Donbass, a claim denied by Ukraine's Security Service.

"Allegedly, our military is going to attack Donetsk and Luhansk, allegedly in order to liberate our territories. I can tell you that all this is absolutely untrue, there are no orders to liberate our territories by force. Moreover, we are aware that if a decision is made to liberate these territories, there will be heavy casualties among the civilian population, there can be no such order in our country," stated Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine.

"The latest reports from the ground in Eastern Ukraine are very concerning to us. We are extremely worried that the civilian population of that part of Ukraine is enduring such sufferings, such risks. The indiscriminate shellings are not acceptable and result in the destruction of civilian infrastructure and people’s homes. This is unacceptable and it should be stopped," said the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin on Friday to reporters.