East Ukraine Front Is Calm as Poroshenko Gives Autonomy Details

by Aliaksandr Kudrytski
9:23 AM EDT March 15, 2015

(Bloomberg) -- Fighting in east Ukraine continued to subside with no military casualties in the past 24 hours as President Petro Poroshenko submitted a draft law that rebels had demanded for further peace progress.

Pro-Russian rebels continued to concentrate heavy military equipment near the coastal town of Novoazovsk not far from Mariupol, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said at a daily briefing in Kiev today. The pullback of heavy weapons as agreed on in a truce last month remains incomplete, with some equipment being returned to earlier locations or being hidden, he said.

As skirmishes in eastern Ukraine became less intensive, Ukraine took further steps to honor details of an agreement supposed to pave the way for long-term peace in the country. Poroshenko on Saturday submitted a draft law to parliament listing areas within the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that will get a special self-governance status. The full text of it wasn’t immediately available.

While Ukraine had already adopted a law on a special status of certain areas in the east of the country, rebels had demanded an exact list of these regions. There is “no sense” in having more talks on resolving the conflict without the Ukrainian parliament giving rebel-held territories a special status, Denis Pushilin, chief negotiator from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on the DPR news website DAN on Saturday.

Disputed Autonomy

While control of Ukraine’s border with Russia is supposed to revert back to Poroshenko’s government by year-end, this is contingent on a constitutional overhaul. While Ukraine has pledged to decentralize some powers, the government has rejected full autonomy for the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions and has refused to switch to a federal system of governance.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-15/east-ukraine-front-is-calm-as-poroshenko-gives-autonomy-details