Amid the increasing military presence of Russian troops along the border of Ukraine, we, the international independent civil society platform CivilMPlus, which has the mission to work together towards conflict resolution in Donbas, condemn the politics of destabilisation fueled by the Russian military build-up on the border of Ukraine.

We strongly believe that the current priority for all the participants of the conflict resolution process is to prevent a new wave of conflict escalation, violence and humanitarian disaster in the region, to restore the ceasefire, based on the agreement from July 2020, to protect the civilian population and to preserve the path to a peaceful resolution of the conflict.

We strongly urge the Russian Federation to return to negotiations in the Normandy format, to re-commit to the implementation of the Minsk agreements and to restrain from any form of military aggression and hybrid attacks. The Russian Federation should fulfil its international commitments, including the OSCE Vienna Document, and withdraw its troops from the Ukrainian border.

The members of the platform highly commend Ukraine’s posture of restraint and its openness to dialogue, as well as its progress on democratic reforms aiming to create and develop sustainable state institutions and a vibrant civil society. We call on the European Union and the EU member states to continue their support of Ukraine on its path of reform.

In this context, we call on the international community to re-emphasise its support for Ukrainian territorial integrity by making it clear that a full-scale attack on Ukraine is in fact an attack on the principles of the world order and will bear serious political, diplomatic and economic consequences.

We call on the international community to take an active role in agreeing a sanction regime against the Russian government and its inner circle, as well as relevant economic actors associated with them.

We ask the EU member states, US, UK and Canada to be more proactive in exerting pressure on the leadership of the Russian Federation through all available diplomatic

channels, both bilaterally and within the intergovernmental bodies such as the OSCE and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

We call on all individual states to increase their engagement in conflict resolution in Ukraine and prioritise it on their political agendas. In line with the recommendations from our Roadmap on Ukraine, we call on the new German coalition to take the lead and foster a more active dialogue on an international level regarding conflict resolution in Donbas.

The CivilMPlus platform calls on international civil society, non-governmental organisations, media, and journalists to raise the potential escalation of the conflict on the Ukrainian-Russian border and the possible humanitarian and political consequences of a full-scale armed conflict as key topics for public and political dialogue.

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The text of the statement does not necessarily reflect the position of all CivilMPlus member organizations.

For additional information or media inquiries, please contact Artem Danylchenko, Communications Coordinator – [email protected]

The independent international civil society platform CivilM + was established in 2017. It includes more than 20 organizations and experts from Ukraine, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, Russia and France. Within the CivilM+, they contribute to the peaceful settlement of the conflict in Donbas: informing the governments and the

public of their countries about the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine, implementing projects in the fields of peacekeeping, transitional justice, dialogue and human rights.

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