Yesterday at 20:06
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that at the first meeting with Vladimir Putin, he would remind him that Crimea and Donbass are parts of Ukraine.
Answering the question from a journalist of Bild ‘what will you say to Putin when you first meet him,’ Zelensky said: “Let us start from the point that Donbas and Crimea are Ukraine.”
Zelensky said that the sanctions against the Russian Federation will need to be expanded if the attacks in Donbas do not stop.
“Sanctions are a diplomatic tool to achieve results, I mean a ceasefire and the restoration of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. If this tool does not work, then the mechanism needs to be expanded.”
According to Zelensky, diplomats of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) should be given a chance to talk again.
“We trust in the Minsk process, so far. We hope it is a solution. We are relaunching it to negotiate a ceasefire and the release of prisoners. But we can’t wait for another 5 years, because Ukrainians die every day. If we have to, we will explore any other way for negotiations, either in Normandy or another format,” he said.
The next TCG meeting on Donbas will be held June 19, 2019.
