President Petro Poroshenko has submitted a draft law that outlines the boundaries of particular districts in the areas under pro-Russian separatist control in eastern Ukraine that could be granted "special status."
The bill was registered into the database of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, late on March 14.
The area to which the special status law could potentially be applied, was outlined on March 12 by Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council. The Rada could vote on it as early as next week.
Under the terms of a truce deal reached in Minsk on February 12 between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, and France, Ukraine's parliament was supposed to officially recognize a special status for the separatist-controlled Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People's Republics.
On March 13, the leaders of the two self-proclaimed entities, Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, jointly called on French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel to "put pressure" on Kyiv to implement the deal agreed in Minsk.