Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says draft amendments to the Ukrainian constitution concerning the decentralization of the national governance system that he has submitted to the Verkhovna Rada do not envision any 'special status' of Donbass, and Ukraine will remain a unitary country.
"The bill doesn't have the slightest hint about federalization. Ukraine has been, is, and will be a unitary state. And the constitutional draft doesn't envision and cannot envision any special status for Donbas, there is simply no such thing there," Poroshenko said in presenting his constitutional amendments at a Verkhovna Rada hearing on July 16.
"It allows for 'a specific procedure of local self-government in certain administrative units in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions', which is to be regulated by a special law," he said.
These proposed amendments to the constitution fully comply with the Minsk agreements, Poroshenko said. "Not a single comma of the norm proposed goes beyond the Minsk agreements," he said.
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