Lithuanian representative urged Russia to respect the agreements reached in September 2014 and February 2015 in Minsk: "according to these agreements, all the detainees, including Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, who spent over 80 days on a hunger strike, should be released." "It is important to ensure that the OSCE Monitoring Mission in Ukraine to be given unhindered access to all areas" said the Lithuanian Ambassador, noting that "there are doubts whether the armed groups deprive weaponry, or use a cover to obtain more."
Russia must stop destabilization of the situation in eastern Ukraine and support armed groups operating there. Lithuania has warned that any attempts by the Russia-backed militants to seek gaining control of additional territory will be a clear breach of the Minsk agreements and will seriously undermine all efforts promoting a sustainable political solution.
"Ukraine's political independence, unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity can not be the subject of negotiations", Lithuanian ambassador said reminding the illegal annexation of the Crimea last year and the systematic, severe human rights violations in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, recorded in the report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Office on March 2. She stressed that the fraudulent referendum was opposed by Crimean Tatars, other religious communities who now face threats, harassment and fake accusations. "Priests, imams and other religious representatives are threatened to prosecute, they are detained and harassed, their prayer houses and monuments - desecrated. Ukrainian TV broadcasting is terminated, journalists are threatened, attacked," the representative of Lithuania has said and recalled that the only Crimean Tatar TV Channel left in Simferopol have been raided, Tatar journalists detained, Tatar newspapers investigated.
