Poroshenko: Minsk process must be finished in 2015:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has insisted that the Minsk agreements on regulating the conflict in eastern Ukraine be fully implemented by the end of this year.
"The implementation…should end in 2015 and cannot be extended," he said at a conference Kyiv on September 11.
He said he had instructed his representative at the Minsk talks, former President Leonid Kuchma, to reject any efforts to extend the process into 2016.
Such an idea was previously raised by European Parliament President Martin Schulz and was endorsed by representatives of the Russia-backed separatists in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
He called for "enhanced restrictive measures" by the international community if Moscow continues to occupy Crimea and "hinder the settlement process" in the east.
Poroshenko also said that Moscow had stepped up its activity in Syria because it did not get "an immediate, powerful response" when it annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea in March 2014.
"Today the so-called little green men are landing in Syria, instigating the an increase in violence in the Middle East, and provoking a further increase in the number of refugees going to the EU," Poroshenko said. (Interfax, TASS)
Since the beginning of 2015 Ukrainians have transferred more than 6 million hryvnas (more than 250,000 dollars by the current exchange rate) to the Ministry of Defense in order to support the army.
According to Viktoria Kushnir, the ministry's spokesperson, 4 million hryvnas were spent on logistical support, and the rest on medical support.
Recently, the ministry prepared a 2016 budget request for almost 87 billion hryvnas. In 2014 the army budget totaled around 15 billion.
In 2014, Kyiv spent 85,700 hryvnas paying out debt from European soccer championship that took place in Kyiv in 2012.