Special status for Ukraine’s rebellious east

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko speaks to lawmakers in Parliament in Kiev. File picture: Sergey Dolzheko

Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko speaks to lawmakers in Parliament in Kiev. File picture: Sergey Dolzheko

Published Sep 16, 2014

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Kiev - Ukrainian lawmakers on Tuesday adopted legislation granting limited self-rule to parts of the pro-Russian east as they prepared to ratify a landmark EU pact at the heart of the country's deadliest crisis since independence.

But renewed clashes that killed four civilians on Monday heaped further pressure on a fragile truce in the bloody five-month war and raised new questions about whether President Petro Poroshenko will succeed in keeping his splintered country together.

Despite the violence, lawmakers adopted two key laws proposed by Poroshenko aimed at ending the pro-Moscow revolt in the industrial east.

The move came shortly before the MPs are to sign the 1 200-page political and economic association agreement in a simultaneous session with the European parliament.

The historic occasion has been muted by the two sides' decision to bow to Russian pressure and delay until 2016 applying the free trade rules that pulled Ukraine out of a rival union being built by the Kremlin.

The rejection of the same EU deal by Kremlin-backed president Viktor Yanukovich in November triggered the bloody chain of events that led to his February ouster and Russia's subsequent seizure of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula.

The defiant decision by Kiev's new pro-Western leaders to still strike the agreement saw Moscow cut off its neighbour's supply of Russian gas and allegedly orchestrate a separatist revolt that has now claimed more than 2 700 lives.

Russia's denials of involvement have not spared it from waves of punishing Western sanctions that have left President Vladimir Putin more isolated and acting less predictably than at any stage of his dominant 15-year reign.

But a European-mediated truce Kiev and Moscow clinched on September 5 has offered the first significant glimmer of hope that the crisis may at last be abating and allowing East-West tensions to mend. - AFP

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