The family of the new head of Ukraine’s Donetsk Regional State Administration Pavlo Kyrylenko lives in the Russia-occupied part of the region, and he is not on speaking terms with his brother due to differences in political views, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

“I have already seen the information that Pavlo’s brother supposedly works in the ‘DPR’ [‘Donetsk People’s Republic’], serves, and so on. We understand everything: that the same Ukrainians like us are living there. Naturally, Pavlo has family there, his parents and brother are there. Parents live there, it’s their land, they consider themselves to be Ukrainians, they don’t want to relocate anywhere, although Pavlo offered them. As for the brother, I know that it was a sore issue for him, so I took it upon myself to say so. He does not talk to his brother due to political differences,” Zelensky said while introducing Kyrylenko in Kramatorsk on July 5.

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“Because of the war in Donbas, many families are split. Pavlo is the same Ukrainian as we are. And please do not divide into ‘ours’ and ‘aliens’ the people who today are in the temporarily occupied areas. They are the same Ukrainians, they have no defects,” Zelensky said.

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