Tymoshenko urges "different negotiating format" on eastern conflict:
By RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has said the Minsk process for resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine has failed to produce results and needs to be accompanied by a parallel peace process based on the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.
In an interview in Brussels with RFE/RL, Tymoshenko said the Budapest document -- under which Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom guaranteed Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for Kyiv's renunciation of nuclear weapons -- should be "the basis of diplomatic negotiations on the establishment of peace in Ukraine."
She criticized the government of President Petro Poroshenko for "forgetting" about the existence of that document.
Tymoshenko, who heads one of Ukraine's largest opposition parties and who is currently nearly even with Poroshenko in public-opinion polls for the 2019 presidential election, emphasized that "Ukraine and Russia are warring countries today" and "Russia is in a state of war against Ukraine."
After Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March 2014, Moscow began fomenting unrest in regions of eastern Ukraine. Since then, Russia has provided military, political, and economic support to separatists in parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
Moscow denies interfering in Ukraine's internal affairs, despite compelling evidence to the contrary.
Tymoshenko told RFE/RL that "the path to peace" lies through establishing a "completely different negotiation format" involving all the Budapest Memorandum signatories. There is no point, she said, in negotiating with the leaders of the Russia-backed separatist units, because "they are absolute marionettes."
At the same time, Tymoshenko said, Ukraine must step up its military response to Russian aggression "by every minute and every second strengthening our army."
She urged the United States to "enable Ukraine to acquire" high-tech defensive weapons.
Tymoshenko confirmed that her Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party intends to contest both the parliamentary and the presidential elections scheduled for 2019.
According to a poll conducted this month, Tymoshenko had 14.4 percent support, compared to 16.1 percent for Poroshenko.
-- EDITOR'S NOTE: We have started a new Ukraine Live Blog as of September 3, 2018. You can find it here.
-- Tens of thousands of people gathered on September 2 in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine to mourn a top rebel leader who was recently killed in a bomb attack.
-- Prominent Ukrainian historian Mykola Shityuk has been found dead in his home city of Mykolaiv, police said on September 2.
-- Ukraine says it has imprisoned the man it accused of being recruited by Russia’s secret services to organize a murder plot against self-exiled Russian reporter and Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko.
-- Ukraine and Russia are trading blame for the killing of a top separatist leader in eastern Ukraine.
-- Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the head of the head of the breakaway separatist entity known as the Donetsk People’s Republic, was killed in an explosion at a cafe in Donetsk on August 31.
-- The United States is ready to widen arms supplies to Ukraine to help build up the country's naval and air defense forces in the face of continuing Russian support for eastern separatists, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine told The Guardian.
-- The spiritual head of the worldwide Orthodox Church in Istanbul has hosted Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill for talks on Ukraine's bid to split from the Russian church, a move strongly opposed by Moscow.
*Time stamps on the blog refer to local time in Ukraine