Brussels, 19/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 19 March, Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk insisted on setting up a peacekeeping mission in East Ukraine.
At the end of a meeting in Brussels with European Council President Donald Tusk, Yatsenyuk said that it was of “common interest to deploy peacekeepers”. He added that the EU has not yet responded to the request of the Ukrainian president and government for this mission. “I hope that the EU will support this idea because everyone wants peace in Europe and one of the tools for achieving peace is to deploy peacekeepers”, he said.
Yatsenyuk stated that the European Parliament had the previous day approved a resolution calling on the EU and UN to send personnel, not only to monitor but also to secure the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
He also refused any discussion of relaxing the sanctions, but underlined that it was possible to discuss extending or strengthening sanctions if Russia did not want to apply the Minsk agreements. “What is Putin's success? What is the formula for Russia's stability? It's the instability of the EU. If Putin managed to undermine the unity between the member states, between the leaders, it would be Putin's biggest success and a disaster for the free world”, Yatsenyuk added (our translation throughout). (Camille-Cerise Gessant)