Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbass postpones local elections
Pro-Russia fighters in Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have postponed disputed local elections to the next year.
We have “agreed to postpone the (Donetsk) elections of October 18 and the (Luhansk) poll of November 1 until next year,” said the chief negotiators of the two self-proclaimed people's republics after meeting in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, on Tuesday.
However, Donetsk negotiator Denis Pushilin and his Luhansk counterpart Vladislav Deinego did not say when exactly they now intend to hold the elections. The two said the elections will be held after the government in Kiev meets a series of demands and assigns the two regions “special status.”
The move came just days after Germany and France pushed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to hold direct talks to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
The October 2 meeting ended with French President Francois Hollande saying it would take time to organize elections in Ukraine that respect international standards. Hollande said it was not possible to launch internationally legitimate elections within such a short timeframe.
The European Union has praised the move, which was also immediately welcomed by Kiev's pro-EU leadership and Moscow as a “fundamental step” toward peace.
The postponement of the local elections coincided with Kiev's pullback of its tanks from the Donbass frontline.
Since April 2014, eastern Ukraine has witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Kiev government forces backed by the West. In March that year, Ukraine’s eastern peninsula of Crimea voted in a referendum rejoin the Russian Federation, triggering the conflict.
UN figures show about 8,000 people have so far died in the conflict.
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