Kiev OKs EU pact, offers rebels rights
KIEV, Ukraine — Lawmakers in Ukraine endorsed an association agreement with the European Union on Tuesday, making a decisive turn in favor of closer relations with Western neighbors in spite of the 10-month-old conflict that the shift in alliance has ignited with Russia.
In a move aimed at softening the blow to Moscow of its slipping influence over Ukraine, the deputies of the Supreme Council also approved a threeyear period of greater autonomy for the separatist-occupied areas of eastern Ukraine and amnesty for most of the proRussia militants.
“Those who live in Donetsk and Luhansk must have a possibility to elect new authorities for themselves, and we must find understanding with these authorities and bring peace, calm, accord to the state,” President Petro Poroshenko said in televised remarks after the closeddoor parliamentary session that adopted the autonomy plan.
The deputies proposed that the separatist-held areas carry out elections for regional leadership and deputies to the national parliament in November.
The areas of Ukraine under government control have set parliamentary elections for Oct. 26.
The offer of amnesty for rebel gunmen would be extended to those who disarm and leave government buildings they have occupied since March.
Amnesty would be denied to anyone who has committed major crimes, the deputies stipulated, including those suspected of shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 on July 17, killing all 298 people on board.
The legislative moves, reported the Ukrinform news agency, were met with skeptical pledges by some separatist leaders to consider the concessions, and by others with denunciation, saying the measures were far short of full independence.
Poroshenko must first sign the autonomy bill and bring it into force, Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the selfproclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.
“Then we will translate it into Russian, study it and give our opinion,” Zakharchenko said.
But another Donetsk separatist leader, Andrei Purgin, said anything short of independence was “unacceptable.”
“This is nonsense when the Rada (Supreme Council) of Ukraine passes bills not for Ukraine, but for Donbass,” Purgin told RIA Novosti, referring to the separatist-held territory in the industrial Don River basin.
“We have our own parliament for this purpose.”
At the Ukraine Crisis Media Center in Kiev, Col. Andriy Lysenko of the National Security and Defense Council told reporters that separatist and Russian troops had again violated an 11-day-old cease-fire over the past 24 hours, lobbing shells at government positions in at least five towns.
Monitors for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe also reported multiple artillery blasts in violation of the Sept. 5 agreement.
The reports did not pinpoint the origins of the shelling but appeared to suggest involvement by government troops and separatist fighters.
More than 3,000 people have died in the six months of fighting in eastern Ukraine, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes for refuge in Russia or Western Ukraine.
The European Union association pact was the catalyst for the crisis that has consumed Ukraine since November, when former President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign it at an EU summit after three years of negotiating the trade deal.
He was deposed in February after a three-month rebellion.