US, EU Should Support Process Begun in Minsk to Find Compromise in Ukraine Crisis – Lavrov

MOSCOW, September 2 (RIA Novosti) — The United States and the European Union should support the process started in Minsk, Belarus, to find a compromise in order to settle the crisis in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Tuesday.

“It will be very important that both the United States and the European partners actively support the necessity to find a commonly accepted compromise within the process that was begun yesterday in Minsk," Lavrov said during a live televised joint press conference with Tunisian Foreign Minister Mongi Hamdi.

Lavrov added that “only then could the numerous calls to political settlement come into being."

On September 1, the Contact Group on Ukrainian reconciliation, comprising Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Kiev government and eastern Ukraine independence supporters met in Belarus’ capital Minsk.

DPR and LPR representatives said during the meeting that if the self-proclaimed republics received certain legislative guarantees of their special status, they would use every effort to “save the single economic, cultural and political space of Ukraine and the whole space of the Russian-Ukrainian civilization."

In July, the international mediators met in Minsk with representatives of independence supporters from Ukraine’s eastern regions to discuss the necessary steps to the end of the ongoing crisis in the country.

Russia's Foreign Ministry has highlighted the importance of the contact group consultations in terms of finding a political solution to the situation in Ukraine.

The next meeting of a Contact Group is scheduled for September 5.

Kiev launched a special military operation in Ukraine’s southeastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk in mid-April to suppress independence supporters who refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new Kiev’s government after the February coup.

According to the latest UN estimates, almost 2,600 people have died since the Kiev’s military operation started, and about 6,000 have been injured.