MOSCOW, Feb 15 (Reuters) – The State Duma on Tuesday passed a bill asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to officially recognize two breakaway zones in eastern Ukraine, in the Donbass region, the speaker said. lower house of the Russian parliament.
This bill asks Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk, proclaimed in 2014 by the Russian-speaking separatists of Donbass, a few months after the annexation by Russia of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
The formal recognition of these two secessionist zones in eastern Ukraine would further accentuate the already high tensions in the region, where Moscow has been massing troops for several months.
It would also be in contradiction with the Minsk agreements signed in 2015 in the Belarusian capital to try to resolve the conflict between Kiev and pro-Russian separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, which Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodimir Zelenski pledged to abide despite current tensions.
(Report Anastasia Teterevleva and Anton Zverev, written by Tom Balmforth; French version Myriam Rivet, edited by Sophie Louet)
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