Following a meeting in the Belarussian capital of Minsk, the parties involved have signed an agreement that will allow local elections to be held in eastern Ukraine.

Ukraine's new President Volodymyr Zelenskyj sees it as a step towards a solution to the conflict. However, the president said that Ukraine must be in control of all its borders with Russia.

"There will be no elections under gun threat," says Zelenskyj, according to the news agency AP.

Former President Petro Poroshenko accuses the incumbent government of betraying the country's interests and of "playing Russia in its hands," according to the Washington Post.

Protests against the government

In the capital, Kiev, hundreds of Ukrainian nationalists will have protested against the events on Tuesday.

- Obviously, for the first time in several years, "constructive" talks between Ukraine and Belarus are ongoing, of course, is positive. But already in the so-called Minsk 2 agreement from 2015 it says that local elections, under Ukrainian control, should be held in the areas controlled by the Russian-supported separatists, says Bert Sundström, SVT's correspondent in Russia.

According to him, one of Volodymyr Zelenskyj's most important election promises was to end the war.

"But those who distrust him fear that in order to achieve his goal, he is prepared to lay flat for Russia's President Putin," says Bert Sundström.