The conflict in Donbas will hardly be resolved even in a year, Kurt Volker, U.S. special envoy for the Ukraine crisis, believes.
According to Walker, it is very likely that hostilities will continue in Ukraine even in a year. The percentage chance that they will be still fighting in Eastern Ukraine is at least 80%, he stressed.
“I think that there’s a chance that there won’t be, but the most likely scenario is that this continues.” he told Politico.
He also recalled that more than 10, 000 people had been killed in the conflict.
In the interview, Volker backed the idea of U.S. delivering weapons to Ukraine to help the country defend from Russia and told the journalist about his latest round of talks with one of Putin’s ‘top lieutenants’, Vladislav Surkov. The U.S. diplomat sait it had been a ‘step back’ and yielded no result,
Volker reiterated that Russia should take responsibility for the annexation of Crimea saying that it was ‘a Russian invasion, a Russian occupation of territory’. He repeatedly attempted to raise the issue of Crimea, but Russians kept saying: “We’re not going to talk about Crimea.”
Washington is in favour of the initiative to send peacekeepers to Donbas, but there should be no Russians within a group. The United States is set to move forward with seeking peace in Ukraine, he said.
“Well, I know—having heard from the president directly on this—he wants to do this. He wants to make peace; he wants to see this resolved; he wants to see Ukraine get its territory back. It’s crystal clear,” the diplomat commented on Donald Trump’s position on the Ukrainian conflict.
belsat.eu, following Politico
