First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine, head of Ukraine’s mission to NATO Vadym Prystaiko has said Russia is blocking the deployment of UN peacekeepers in Donbas.
“The Minsk agreements haven’t resulted in peace over these three years. There may be some additional mechanisms that we could adopt to ensure peace for our people. That is why we are talking about peacekeeping forces in any format… There are various formats. We discussed the option of arming the OSCE mission, the current mission or a new one with light weapons, so that they should feel more confident and be able to visit those places that they should visit. The deployment of UN peacekeepers is blocked by Russia, which is behind the militants,” Prystaiko said in an interview with Radio Liberty.
Kyiv is also entitled to use foreign lethal weapon to defend the Ukrainian sovereignty and integrity, he said.
“We lack weapons to make up for the amount of tanks and armored vehicles which Russia pumped, and continues stuffing, into our territories. This is exactly why we ask to be given a possibility to stop the aggression. I know Russia’s nervous reaction to this. But every state, including Ukraine, has the right to defend itself and has the right to use the weapon it needs,” Ukraine’s envoy to NATO said in an interview with Radio Liberty.
Commenting on the Kyiv visit of United States Special Representative on Ukraine Kurt Volker, Prystaiko noted that, after the recent talks with Russian presidential aide Vladislav Surkov the American “arrived so that we could determine in what way to work further,” Prystaiko said.
“We want to know in what way the Americans can help with the Normandy process, the Minsk process. There is progress. We leave it outside the parentheses,” Prystaiko said.
On August 24 U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, after meeting with the Ukrainian president in Kyiv, said that the talks focused, among other topics, on lethal weapon supplies to Ukraine.
