BRUSSELS, Oct. 9 – Ukraine warned the European Union on Wednesday not to allow pro-Russian rebels to carve out a de facto state and said that unlike other "frozen conflicts" in the former Soviet Union the conflict in this country's east could destabilize all of Europe, Reuters reported.

Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, speaking to Reuters during a visit with EU and NATO officials in Brussels, urged Moscow to dissuade separatists from holding their own elections in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk next month. He said local people would do better to vote in local elections organized by Kiev in December.

"Fake elections" organized by leaders of self-styled, pro-Russian people's republics would, Klimkin said, reinforce the appearance that eastern Ukraine is becoming a long-term "frozen conflict" like Transdniestria or Abkhazia, Moscow-backed breakaway regions of former-Soviet Moldova and Georgia.

"A frozen conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk, let us not have any illusions, could not be stabilized as for example Transdniestria or Abkhazia ... It would bring us more instability, more detribalization, not only for the whole of Ukraine but for the whole of Europe," Klimkin said.
He insisted he was not saying so to "blackmail" western European states into stepping up actions, such as economic sanctions, against Russia, or to get NATO to increase non-military assistance to Kiev.

The European Union is due to review some of its sanctions against Russia next month.

Klimkin said people in eastern Ukraine had to "get rid of the terrorists" running the region, and he said Moscow should help defuse the conflict there, which has continued despite a ceasefire agreed in early September.

On Wednesday, the United Nations said that struggle was claiming about 10 lives a day among government troops, pro-Russian separatists and civilians.

Acknowledging that Kiev could not easily prevent people in the largely Russian-speaking east from holding their own vote on Nov. 2, he urged Moscow not to recognize that process and to back Kiev's offers of more autonomy for the regions.

"It's also about Russia saying extremely clearly that such elections are no option at all," Klimkin said. "Russia should discourage Donetsk and Luhansk from having these elections and try to put the process on the track to stabilization."

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, elected in May in a vote that many in the east ignored, has called a parliamentary election for Oct. 26. He hopes that can undercut accusations from Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Western-backed Kiev leadership, which took power after a popular uprising in February, lacks legitimacy and is hostile to ethnic Russians.

"We have to get on track the all-inclusive, all-Ukrainian political process in Donetsk and Luhansk," Klimkin said. "We are ready for more decentralization." (rt/ez)