KYIV. Aug 10 (Interfax) - Leonid Kravchuk, the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) on the settlement of the situation in Donbas and first president of Ukraine, said he is ready for talks with representatives of the self-proclaimed republics, but only those who represent civil society and have not been involved in military action.
"Kyiv's wish alone is not enough to convince Moscow, it's hard to convince them. However, when that is the desire of the people who live there and those who are outside... I emphasize, it's 1.7 million people. Then Moscow will hear better and will also heed these people. I believe in that," Kravchuk said in an interview with the Radio Liberty project Donbas Realii.
Responding to a question as to with whom specifically in Donbas he is ready to sit down at the negotiation table, Kravchuk said it is civil society above all else.
"These are people who are not involved in the administration, they did not fight in the war, directly with rifles in their hands, they didn't torture prisoners. These are people who work in higher education establishments, in schools, in NGOs, I am ready to listen to them," he said.
Kravchuk also said the planned changes to the work of the TCG comprise the inclusion in it "of people or a person who knows Donbas well, who have lived, worked in Donbas."
"The main thing for us is to hear the people who live in Donbas. We say everywhere that these are Ukrainians, it's our territory. It's Ukrainian. But in order to establish peace there it's not enough to know the wish of the 'administrators' who are now present in that part of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the main thing is the people who live there," Kravchuk said.
The people of the DPR and the LPR are not demanding an end to the war as they do not see their prospects, but they see Ukraine as an enemy, he said.
"We should act in such a way as to make people trust. For example, instead of useless talks about status, about everything else we suggest introducing in these regions the standard of a free economic zone. If that is adopted, people will immediately join the work, investment will come, economic entities will be restored, the destroyed residential buildings will be restored, people will return and see prospects. Now they do not see such prospects. They think their prospects are in Russia, but they are wrong," Kravchuk said.