Ukraine will reconsider its commitments to a truce after controversial elections on the east, its president has announced. The government in Kyiv has also warned of more Russian troops crossing the border, reports GHN based on DW.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko threatened to tear up a truce deal with the rebels on Monday evening, as a reaction to the separatist ballot in the east.
Poroshenko called a meeting of his top security chiefs for Tuesday, and a slammed the controversial vote as an "electoral farce."
"We should reexamine our action plan. I have discussed it with the defense minister," he said while addressing the nation on Monday evening, pointing out the election, which had taken place the previous day, was a "flagrant violation" of a bedrock agreement meant to shape a solution to the conflict in the east, that had been reached in Minsk two months ago.
Following a controversial vote, pro-Russian separatists were elected as leaders of the rebel-controlled regions in Eastern Ukraine. Rebel commander Alexander Zakharchenko won 81 percent of the vote in so-called Donetsk People's Republics, while Igor Plotnitsky was elected leader in Luhansk with 63 percent. EU called the elections "illegal and illegitimate."
Poroshenko is proposing to abolish a law agreed under the Minsk protocol, which grants a certain level of autonomy to pro-Russian strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, for three years.
That self-rule offer for the separatist region was meant to win support for the peace deal, said Poroshenko, but Sunday's elections have "put the entire peace process in great jeopardy " and "significantly worsened the situation in Donbass."