MOSCOW – Russia is not going to integrate the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics into its composition, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said.
“The issue is somewhat absurd because President Putin and Russian representatives have said on various levels for many years that Moscow is not trying to integrate the self-proclaimed Donbas republics, the DPR and the LPR, into the Russian Federation,” he told reporters, commenting on media reports that Moscow does not want to incorporate the DPR and the LPR and recognize them as separate states, but wants to separate them from Ukraine.
In this regard, Peskov called such reports naive and fairly primitive.
“There is one plan here: to ensure the implementation of the Minsk agreements, to exert all possible influence together with our partners in the ‘Normandy four’ to help Kyiv independently find a way out from the consequences that arose after the civil war and the coup in the capital of Ukraine three years ago,” Peskov said.
Responding to a question as to whether his words mean that Moscow sees the DPR and the LPR as part of Ukraine, Peskov said: “It’s an internal issue of Ukraine.”
