MOSCOW. July 9 (Interfax) - The return of industrial enterprises in Donbas to control of their previous owners can be considered only after Kyiv lifts the economic blockade on Donbas, and the opposite sequence looks unrealistic, Center for Current Policy Director Alexei Chesnakov said.
"The Ukrainian president should closely examine the chronology of the 2014-2017 events. The transfer of the enterprises under control of the [self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics] DPR and LPR authorities was a countermeasure and was started only after the Kyiv authorities and the volunteer battalions of radical nationalists imposed a total economic blockade on Donbas. Therefore, the sequence in this case should be directly opposite to what [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky has proposed: the lifting of Donbas' socioeconomic blockade should be the first step," Chesnakov told Interfax.
Therefore, Zelensky's proposal "looks unrealistic," Chesnakov said.
"The parties have harbored a lot of grudges against each other, and these grudges should be settled in the same logical and political order in which they appeared. Without mixing causes and effects," he said.
Zelensky said earlier that the "economic blockade" on Donbas might be lifted if the Ukrainian enterprises nationalized by the DPR and LPR authorities were returned to their previous owners.