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Most Ukrainians seek political solution to Donbass crisis: Poll

People stand outside a hospital destroyed as a result of shelling between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russia forces in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, July 19, 2015. (© AFP)

Most people in Ukraine believe the best solution to the crisis in the eastern parts of the country will come through further negotiations on the basis of the Minsk II agreement, a new survey shows.

According to the study conducted by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology, 56.8 percent of the respondents said they thought the conflict in Donbass would be solved through peace talks, Interfax news agency reported on Tuesday.

Another 28.3 percent of those surveyed said they believed that the eastern parts of Ukraine, which are controlled by pro-Russia forces, should be overrun by the army, 13.7 percent said they could not answer the question, and 1.1 percent refused to answer.

Moreover, 47.7 percent of the respondents said they would agree to give the status of a state language to Russian in a bid to establish peace in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine.

The survey was carried out in the period between June 27 and July 9. A total of 2,044 people living in all regions of Ukraine except for those parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that are not controlled by Kiev answered the questions.

Ukraine’s volatile east has witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Russia forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations to silence pro-Moscow protests in mid-April.

The warring sides reached a truce deal, dubbed Minsk II, at a summit in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk in February. The agreement introduced measures such as a ceasefire, the pullout of heavy weaponry and constitutional reform in the country by the end of the year. The two sides, however, frequently accuse each other of violating the ceasefire.

The persisting conflict has so far claimed the lives of at least 6,500 people and displaced nearly 1.5 million, according to the United Nations.


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