LPR Leader Believes Reconciliation Between East, West Of Ukraine Impossible Due To US

LUHANSK (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 07th May, 2021) Reconciliation between Ukraine's East and West is impossible, since the United States deliberately stirs up contradictions between the sides, the leader of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), Leonid Pasechnik, said in an interview with Sputnik.

"I am afraid that such [reconciliation] is impossible because it is to this split that the United States is pushing Ukrainian nationalists," Pasechnik said.

The LPR leader believes that it was disputes about the WWII, the role of infamous Ukrainian nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA, extremist organization banned in Russia) in the war that became the "bone of contention" between the East and West of Ukraine.

"[These disputes] were the reason for the war that is taking place on the territory of Ukraine today. That is here, on our territory, on the territory of Donbas," the official added.

According to the leader, the US is not interested in reconciliation and has been fueling these nationalist sentiments across Ukraine.

"And now, of course, they will not let go of this situation, they will continue to fuel [the situation], come up with various other historical reasons in order to drive a wedge between us and the rest of Ukraine," Pasechnik said.

The official went on to call on the two participants in the Normandy format � France and Germany � to respond in a more severe manner to Kiev's violations of the Minsk agreements.

"I am sure that Berlin and Paris are probably tired of Kiev's inability to negotiate," Pasechnik said, noting that they are persistently trying to ignore Kiev's efforts to rewrite the Minsk agreements.

The official added that the two countries' behavior did not correspond to the image of mediators in the conflict and guarantors of the implementation of the Minsk agreements.

The so-called Normandy Four format, which includes Russia, France, Germany, and Ukraine, was established in June 2014 to mediate the conflict in eastern Ukraine, after the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known together as Donbas, proclaimed independence following what they considered to be a coup in Kiev in February of that year.