Zelenskyy Cancels Decrees On Formation Of TCG And Dissolves Delegation

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy canceled the decrees on the formation of the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) regarding the settlement of the situation in Donetsk and Luhansk regions and dissolved the delegation.

This is stated in the decree of the head of state No. 621 of September 1, Ukrainian News Agency reports.

With this decree, Zelenskyy recognized as invalid a number of previous decrees on the creation of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG and its composition.

According to the text of the decree, the following are recognized as having lost their validity:

• decree of the President of May 5, 2020 No. 167/2020 "On the delegation of Ukraine to participate in the Trilateral Contact Group";
• decree of July 30, 2020 No. 302/2020 "On changes in the composition of the delegation of Ukraine for participation in the Trilateral Contact Group";
• decree No. 327/2020 dated August 18, 2020 "Questions of the delegation of Ukraine for participation in the Trilateral Contact Group";
• decree of September 30, 2020 No. 414/2020 "Questions of the delegation of Ukraine for participation in the Trilateral Contact Group";
• decree of February 26, 2021 No. 80/2021 "On changes in the composition of the delegation of Ukraine to participate in the Trilateral Contact Group";
• decree No. 568/2021 dated November 5, 2021 "On changes in the composition of the delegation of Ukraine to participate in the Trilateral Contact Group";
• paragraph 2 of the Decree of the President of Ukraine dated July 30, 2020 No. 424/2020-рп "On the representative of Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group for the Peaceful Settlement of the Situation in Donetsk and Luhansk Regions".

The TCG was created in 2014 as a format for negotiations on the settlement of the conflict in Donbas, which included representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE.

As part of the negotiation process in 2015, the parties reached the Minsk Agreements, the key point of which was a ceasefire in Donbas.

From August 2014 until the COVID-19 pandemic, meetings were held in Minsk (Belarus), after the start of the pandemic - in an online format.

As of February 2022, the delegation of Ukraine to the TCG included members of the Verkhovna Rada Andrii Kostin, Oleksandr Merezhko, Halyna Tretiakova, adviser to the Office of the President Viktoriya Strakhova, and Deputy Minister of Defense Oleksandr Polishchuk. The delegation was headed by the first President of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk.

The last meeting of the TCG was supposed to take place on February 19 - five days before the start of the full-scale invasion, but was disrupted by representatives of Russia.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, on February 17, the Ukrainian delegation asked the OSCE representative in the TCG to convene extraordinary consultations of the working group and meeting of the TCG due to the shelling by militants of Stanytsia Luhanska and Vrubivka, Luhansk region.

On February 18, Russia withdrew from the TCG meeting regarding the escalation in Donbas.