Sir, regarding your report “Putin and Merkel meet over impasse on Ukraine” (October 19): Ukraine is committed to a peaceful settlement to the conflict in Donbas in line with the Minsk agreement, which lays out a careful sequence of actions to achieve peace.

 

Unfortunately, progress has been slow because Russia and Russia-backed militants have never implemented the first two provisions of the Minsk agreement, for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the conflict zone. Militants have violated the ceasefire almost 500 times in October alone, and used banned weapons more than 100 times in September. Russia also continues to hold Ukrainian citizens as prisoners.

 

For our part, Ukraine has begun the process of political reform, with constitutional amendments introduced into our parliament for the decentralization of powers. Since Russia has not, however taken the steps required to end the violence in Donbas, we have been unable to proceed with the political settlement. We are still determined to do what we can to restore lasting peace in Ukraine. Thus we welcome the decision reached by the Normandy Four to elaborate a road map that will outline the sequence of steps and the quarantees for the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

Natalia Galibarenko, Ambassador of Ukraine to the UK