LPR ready to consider cooperation options to supply coal to Ukraine - Pasechnik

The Lugansk People’s Republic is ready to consider options to supply coal and electricity to Ukraine, LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik said.

“Kiev asked to consider commercial supplies of coal and electricity from Donbass to Ukraine at a session of the subgroup on economic issues,” Pasechnik said. “The LPR is ready to consider cooperation options,” Paschenik wrote on Twitter.

Earlier, LPR representative at the Minsk talks, the Republic’s Foreign Minister Vladislav Deinego said that Kiev representatives at the session of the Contact Group subgroup on economic and rebuilding issues asked to discuss commercial supplies of electricity and coal from Donbass to Ukraine. However, “they kept silent when the Republics expressed their “readiness to consider this possibility,” Deinego said.

The Ukrainian government launched the so-called anti-terrorist operation against Donbass in April 2014. Conflict settlement relies on the Package of Measures for the Implementation of the Minsk Agreements, signed on February 12, 2015 in the Belarussian capital by the Contact Group members and coordinated by the Normandy Four heads of states (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine). The UN Security Council approved the document by Resolution No 2202 of February 17, 2015 and called upon the parties to ensure its implementation.

The document provides for comprehensive ceasefire, withdrawal of all heavy weapons from the contact line, starting a dialog on reconstruction of social and economic ties between Kiev and Donbass. It also envisages carrying out constitutional reform in Ukraine providing for decentralization and adopting permanent legislation on a special status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

To facilitate the work of the Contact Group, four working groups were set up under its aegis to deal with issues of security, politics, return of internally displaced people and refuges, as well as with social, humanitarian, economic and rehabilitation issues. *i*s