MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, will next week debate a proposal to ask President Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the two breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine, a said its president on Friday.
Vyacheslav Volodin made this announcement a few hours after talks between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Geneva on the situation in Ukraine.
Asked about this, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he thought it best to avoid initiatives that heightened tensions and suggested avoiding the temptation of “political coups” in the current context.
However, Russia has raised the stakes since it made a series of “proposals” aimed, according to it, at guaranteeing its own security, including the halting of NATO’s expansion towards the East and in particular in Ukraine. – request categorically rejected by Westerners.
After the fall of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014 and militarily backed Russian-speaking separatists in Donbass, who have proclaimed the “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk and refuse to return to the bosom of Kiev.
The formal recognition of the independence of these two Ukrainian regions is one of the retaliatory measures that Vladimir Putin could decide on if the outcome of the negotiations with the West does not satisfy Moscow.
In a statement broadcast on Telegram, the president of the Duma promises to follow up on the proposal tabled by eleven deputies, including the leader of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov, who asks the Russian president to recognize the independence of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk for protect their inhabitants from external threats.
Moscow has issued more than 600,000 Russian passports to residents of these regions of Donbass since 2014.
“We see that (Ukrainian) President Zelensky is ignoring the Minsk (peace) agreements. NATO wants to occupy Ukraine. Either can lead to tragedy. We cannot let it happen “, justifies Vyacheslav Volodin.
Western leaders have repeated many times that the question of Ukraine joining NATO does not arise in the short term, while refusing to rule out this initiative on principle.
(Report by Andrew Osborn, French version Tangi Salaün, edited by Blandine Hénault and Sophie Louet)