Expert: Budget decentralization can strengthen Ukraine’s position in Minsk peace talks

Bohdan Yaremenko, Chairman of the Board of the Maidan of Foreign Affairs Charity Foundation, said this on Tuesday at a roundtable meeting dedicated to the issues of the occupied territories of Donbas, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

“The results of sociological polls show only one thing: the Ukrainian government currently has really good grounds for a maneuver. Currently all these issues of federalization, a separate status [for Donbas], the demands for a large independence, autonomy from Kyiv can be easily added to the issue on the decentralization of regions, but not a political [decentralization], not the decentralization of regions, but the budget decentralization of local communities, and this means we should allocate more money to them,” Yaremenko said.

According to him, such amendments to the Constitution and current legislation could give Ukraine the grounds to state about the implementation of a corresponding clause of the Minsk Agreements.

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