Poroshenko submits late draft resolution on special status of districts in Donbas region

© EPA/SERGEY DOLZHENKO

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has submitted a draft resolution on granting special status to separate districts, cities, settlements and villages in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions where a special order of self-government will be introduced, the Ukrainian parliament reports on its website.

Under point 4 of the package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements, Ukraine's Verkhovnaya Rada (parliament) was supposed to adopt a resolution indicating separate districts in the Donbas region that will have a special political and economic status by March 14. After the resolution had not been passed on time, the heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, asked German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, who are the guarantors of the Minsk agreements, to exert pressure on the Ukrainian leadership and make it implement the Minsk agreements.

For the moment, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council is the only state body in Ukraine that has supported a decision to delimitate the borders of separate districts where a special form of local self-government is to be introduced along the line of contact defined by the Minsk agreements.

The Ukrainian parliament's next plenary meeting is scheduled for March 17, the website says.