DONETSK. Sept 28 (Interfax) - The leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) has insisted that by conducting local elections on October 18 the DPR is not violating the Minsk agreements.
The Trilateral Contact Group held a "fairly serious discussion" of the issue of Donbas elections, DPR people's council speaker Denis Pushilin told reporters on Sunday.
"A fairly serious discussion took place, but for us the case for holding the elections is absolutely clear. For us, this is a unilateral implementation of the Minsk agreements, we are thus implementing the clause demanding the elections," Pushilin said.
It was reported that local elections in the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) have been scheduled on November 1.
Kyiv and a number of western countries have criticized these decisions, saying that such DPR and LPR elections would be against the Ukrainian laws and the Minsk agreements.
As for the Donbas settlement process in general, the DPR representative said: "This is a very long-running conflict." "There is no fast solution, no fast understanding of how it should be resolved, because what we demand and are okay with is not okay with Ukraine, and vice versa, what Ukraine proposes is unacceptable, we cannot accept that. And there is a need here for the Normandy format to intervene in this process," Pushilin said.
Ukraine and the DPR have failed to find consensus on several issues, he said. "On several issues, our views are so contradictory… And we are aware of it and trying to take all parties into account and find compromise-based solutions," he said.