While Ukraine struggles to implement key conditions of the Minsk agreements, its foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, called on Russia to leave Donbas in an exclusive DW interview. “My fundamental point [is that] security should be there and Russia should be out, in order to get Donbas back into Ukraine,” Klimkin told DW.
He said Western sanctions on Moscow should remain in place until Russia is “literally out of Ukraine.” Allowing Russia to attack an independent country would be like “opening Pandora’s box.” In an attempt to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine, both Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists from Donetsk and Luhansk signed the Minsk II settlement in February 2015. Today, key aspects of the agreement, such as the withdrawal of heavy weapons and the exchange of prisoners, have yet to be implemented. But Klimkin told DW’s Tim Sebastian on Conflict Zone that these failures do not mean the agreement is dead, adding that “Minsk is simple and easy, if you want to implement it.”