DPR to Lay Claims Over Whole Donetsk Region's Territory: Deputy PM

[Purveyor]

The Donetsk People's Republic should be within the borders of the former Donetsk Region, DPR deputy prime minister said, pointing out that the issue should be addressed "at the negotiating table, without any weapons in hands."

Europe
18:04 23.11.2014(updated 18:26 23.11.2014)

DONETSK, November 23 (Sputnik) — The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) is going to lay territorial claims over the entire territory of Ukraine's Donetsk Region, should the talks with Kiev occur, DPR Deputy Prime Minister Denis Pushilin said Sunday.

"We will insist on a full territorial integrity of the republic. It is within the borders of the former Donetsk Region," Pushilin told reporters, pointing out that the issue should be addressed "at the negotiating table, without any weapons in hands."

"Some people do not believe now that we will bring the whole territory of the region under control. But many people also did not believe that the republic would appear, that we would hold the referendum and elections, that we would withstand the onslaught of the [Ukrainian] army," Pushilin said, answering the question whether Kiev would agree to hand over the whole territory of Donbas to the self-proclaimed republic.

DPR head Alexander Zakharchenko has repeatedly stated that the whole territory of the "former Donetsk Region" should become part of the Donetsk People's Republic.

Following a February coup in Kiev, Donetsk and Luhansk residents established people’s republics that later declared their independence. The crisis in Ukraine escalated when Kiev authorities launched a military operation against independence supporters in eastern Ukraine in mid-April.

http://sputniknews.com/europe/20141123/1015064535.html

[Igel]

1. Yes, they have.

Pushilin's been consistent. They'd rather continue to kill civilians by bombardment and bring "peace" by military means to cities that they've never controlled than lose territory they've never had. (The word for this is "greed"; another word for it is "we need to unite our Volk under one banner, that of the volkische republic.&quot

Of course, one of the problems with this is the ethnic cleansing and "genocide" that would occur, since there are bands of majority Ukrainian-speaking populations in the Donbas, within the oblasts of Donets'k and Luhans'k proper. The urbanites that desire a repeat of 1943 are barely aware of them, even though their ancestors were there far longer than the Russians have been. (They've also forgotten that the population at one time was more German than Russian. Donetsk, formerly Stalino, was something like Yuzovsk ... Named after the founder of the first steelworks there, Hughes. A Brit.)

Since Ukrainian booksellers have been beaten and closed, the channels banned, Russian textbooks imported, etc., etc., one would assume that their fate would be the fate of the Ukrainian-speaking population in the Crimea: You're part of Russian now, so while we demand compassion and self-determination for our kind, you're not like us and don't merit them.