MOSCOW. Jan 22 (Interfax) - Russia has urged the international community to compel Ukrainian authorities into abandoning armed methods of resolution of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russian Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vitaly Churkin said.
"We are insistently calling on every responsible member of the international community to demand that Ukrainian authorities quit the confrontational logic and unconditionally renounce the course towards suppression of the southeast by force and to make them realize that now the most pressing need is the launch of a direct all-Ukraine dialogue for a detailed discussion and coordination of the constitutional system of the country in which all citizens without exception can live safely," he said at the UN Security Council meeting dedicated to Ukraine.
The envoy pointed to the need for the immediate resumption of "the work of the Contact Group towards the all-inclusive fulfillment" of the Minsk agreements. "For our part, we are doing everything possible to hold the next meeting [of the Contact Group] in Minsk as soon as possible," Churkin underlined.
He regretted that the January 16 meeting of the Minsk Contact Group "had been disrupted by Kyiv." "A representative of Kyiv never showed up in the Belarusian capital city," the Russian envoy to the UN said.