KIEV: Ukraine's highest court on Friday allowed parliament to vote on Western-backed constitutional amendments aimed at stemming daily bloodshed by giving pro-Russian insurgents partial autonomy in the separatist east.
The idea of granting limited self-rule to rebellious parts of Ukraine's industrial war zone for three years has struck a note of disquiet among many lawmakers and much of the Kiev media.
But it was inscribed in a truce deal that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russia's Vladimir Putin signed off on in February in the Belarussian capital Minsk.
Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority on July 16 to ask Ukraine's constitutional court to rule whether such changes to the basic law were legal.
The former Soviet country's justice Vasyl Brintsev concluded without reservations that it was.
The idea of militia-run regions holding their own elections and setting up separate police forces "do not break or limit the rights and freedoms of (Ukrainian) people and citizens," Brintsev said in the decision.
The self-rule clause is part of a broader "decentralisation" proposal that should see Kiev cede some of its powers to all regions -- and assign especially broad ones to pro-Russian lands -- in the months to come.
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