Theme of federalization "disappears” in Donbas - Taruta

 A theme of federalization “disappeared” in Donbas and a play in "the Donetsk People's Republic" is a fake.

This was stated by Head of the Donetsk Regional State Administration Serhiy Taruta at a meeting at the Regional Development, Construction, Housing and Utilities Ministry on decentralization of executive power with the participation of local government representatives from Volyn, Donetsk, Luhansk and Lviv regions, a Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We've eliminated the theme of federalization since the communities do not get anything in this case, we will just move the capital to the regional level and thus will also increase the number of officials at the local level," Taruta has said.

He noted that after such explanations, people begin to realize that federalization is an additional burden on each taxpayer, and they lean more and more towards decentralization.

The Regional State Administration Chairman added that "we play in the so-called Donetsk Republic, but this is a kind of a fake, as the youth say.”

According to him, the most important today is to convey to people of each region the advantages of the local government reform.

At the same time, Taruta said, it is important that the local authorities know how to exercise their powers: "Communicating with many mayors, chairmen of district state administrations, I became convinced that they do not know exactly the capabilities of their budgets, and that means that today it is advantageous for them to send people to Kyiv on all existing problems, making people [from Kyiv] guilty."

“The Concept of the local government reform reflects almost all the proposals that we have passed three weeks ago. This corresponds to the desire of Donbas and, I think, of other regions. Kyiv hears us, Kyiv meets the needs of the regions to the maximum, and goes toward decentralization," the Chairman of the Donetsk Regional State Administration noted.