Volker: a referendum in the Donbass is impossible

The referendum in the Donbass is impossible that the White House administration has already confirmed. Such a statement, as Interfax reports, made a special representative of the US State Department for Ukraine Kurt Walker.

"The White House has already made a statement, and he rejected this proposal," he said in an interview with 112 Ukraine on Tuesday.

Walker believes that without Ukraine’s control over these territories, people live in a dangerous situation, there is no freedom of movement, many people have left - "there can be no referendum there, and it cannot be legitimate."

Recall, on July 20, Bloomberg, citing his sources, reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin during the last meeting with his American colleague Donald Trump proposed holding a referendum in the self -proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. According to the agency, Putin told about this at a meeting with the ambassadors of the Russian Federation, which took place in Moscow on July 19.

Earlier, Trump said that Ukraine was one of the ones that was discussed at a meeting in Helsinki on July 16, but did not specify the details.

“Such mechanisms are discussed at the level of ideas, so that in the future, it is possible to implement them with the assistance of all participants (Minsk) process,” a source familiar with the situation told Interfax at the same time. According to him, the main thing is that this initiative is not incorrectly interpreted. “The Crimean Script” she does not suggest, ”the agency’s interlocutor emphasized.

The first vice speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Irina Gerashchenko excluded the possibility of a referendum in the territories of Donbass not controlled by Kyiv. “There will be no referenda under the muzzles of machine guns on the lands occupied by the Kremlin,” she wrote on Friday on her Facebook . Gerashchenko added that in the Minsk agreements the possibility of conducting such referenda is not provided. According to her, the Ukrainian side has already officially appealed to the United States with a request to provide "information about what" new ideas in Ukraine ", which the Russian president announced in an interview, was talking at a meeting in Helsinki, and whether it was at all."

Earlier, referendums were already held in the DPR and LPR, according to which it was announced that most of the inhabitants of these self -proclaimed republics spoke out for independence from Ukraine. This happened on May 11, 2014. 89.7% of residents of the region voted in the DPR for ", 96.2% in the LPR.

Ukraine, the EU and the USA did not recognize the results of these referenda. The Ukrainian authorities called the plebiscite Fars. The Kremlin said that he "respects" the results of the will of the people of Donbass.

In February 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the recognition of passports of the DPR and LPR, which once again outraged Kiev and NATO .

At the same time, a year later, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov admitted that Moscow has not yet recognized the DPR and LPR, as he is trying to fulfill the Minsk agreements. In addition, the Russian Foreign Ministry explained that the recognition of passports of the DPR and LPR istemporary .