Putin asks Federation Council to cancel use of force resolution against Ukraine

MOSCOW, June 24 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, to scrap its March 1 resolution to launch a military offensive against Ukraine.

Putin is trying to signal to the world that he is giving the peace deal and cease-fire a chance by trying to normalize the situation in Ukraine. Putin sent an official address to the Federation Council before he left for an official visit to Vienna. Deputy head of the Federation Council's International Committee Andrey Klimov said the council had received Putin's request and would repeal the resolution on June 25.

The request to end the resolution is linked to the beginning of trilateral talks, involving Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, regarding the situation in eastern Ukraine.

"Because of the beginning of the three-party talks to settle down the situation in the eastern parts of Ukraine, the head of state has addressed to the Federation Council to repeal the resolution on the use of Russian armed forces on the territory of Ukraine," said presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov.

Pro-Russia separatists agreed to put down their weapons Monday in observance of the unilateral truce declared by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Despite the ongoing violence in eastern Ukraine, Russia has maintained that it has sent no troops to support the separatists in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

The Russian Parliament had authorized Putin on March 1 to use military force in the neighboring region of Ukraine "until the normalization of the social and political situation in that country."