KYIV. June 7 (Interfax) - The provisions of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's roadmap for settling the conflict in Donbas aired by Leonid Kuchma, Kyiv's delegate to the Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas, mark the start of Ukraine's capitulation in line with Russia's scenario, Verkhovna Rada Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Hanna Hopko said.
"Ukraine's security and sovereignty cannot be a subject of bargaining. If President Zelensky does not publicly retract Kuchma's statements, this means he has taken the path of high treason," Hopko said on Facebook on Thursday.
All Ukrainians want peace, "but peace and capitulation on the enemy's terms must not be confused," she said.
"What does the proposal that returning fire should be forbidden mean? Do Commander-in-Chief Zelensky and his representative Kuchma suggest that Ukrainian soldiers on the frontline should become defenseless targets? What's the next step? Walk out of the trenches and lay down arms before the invaders? What does the proposal on lifting the blockade on the occupied territories mean? After all, the National Security and Defense Council decided to halt trade with the occupied territories in response to the seizure of Ukrainian enterprises and the introduction of a ruble zone in the ORDLO [the territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions not currently controlled by Kyiv]. Has the enemy returned our enterprises, reintroduced the hryvnia and stopped committing crimes in the occupied territories?" Hopko said.
Volodymyr Ariev, the head of the Verkhovna Rada's delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), said Kyiv's unilateral concessions on Donbas "are, without any exaggeration, the surrender of the country's national security."
"The aggressor is not making any concessions and only setting out terms of surrender through [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov's mouth. Therefore, ending resistance and starting trade in these conditions means direct betrayal of Ukraine," Ariev said on Facebook on Thursday.
The Trilateral Contact Group for Donbas met in Minsk on June 5. Leonid Kuchma said following the meeting that the group discussed security problems, and the participants agreed not only on a moment when a ceasefire is to be declared in Donbas but also on a mechanism of its enforcement.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) special envoy to the group, Martin Sajdik, told journalists about Kuchma's proposal that the economic blockade should be lifted from the occupied Donbas territories.