Separatists in eastern Ukraine said on Tuesday, October 6, they would postpone the disputed elections that were threatening to derail a peace plan, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The move was immediately welcomed by Moscow and Kiev as another step toward implementing the plan signed in February in Minsk, Belarus, to end the 1½-year conflict that has claimed almost 8,000 lives.
While a ceasefire has largely held in the region for a month, both sides have balked at political concessions aimed at reintegrating rebel-held areas into the rest of the country, with increased local powers.
Separatist officials were planning to hold their own local elections in the coming weeks, a move Kiev had condemned as illegal. On Tuesday, they said via their news agencies that they would postpone the elections until next year.
Kiev and its Western backers have demanded that local elections take place according to Ukrainian law as set under the peace plan, not on the rebels’ terms.
The announcement follows a meeting in Paris on Friday between Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
It means a de facto extension of the peace plan, which was originally supposed to be carried out in full by the end of this year.