Donetsk, Oct 3 - DAN. The rectification of violations in the areas of disengagement of the conflicting parties’ forces and hardware in the settlements of Petrovskoye (DPR) and Zolotoye (LPR) will take 30 days, Donetsk People’s Republic representative to the security subgroup Alexey Nikonorov said on Thursday.
“At the Contact Group meeting in Minsk on October 1, the parties agreed the date for beginning the rectification of violations in the Petrovskoye and Zolotoye disengagement zones; it’s October 7,” Nikonorov said. “In this connection, the seven-day ceasefire condition does not apply; the process has to begin on October 7 as noted by the Contact Group. It will run for 30 days synchronously in the two zones.”
A number of measures have been planned towards eliminating the violations such as withdrawal of forces and hardware of Ukrainian armed formations, mine clearance, and dismantling of fortifications and other military facilities, he added.
Earlier this week, the Contact Group coordinated the schedule plan to eliminate the violations in the Petrovskoye and Zolotoye disengagement zones starting October 7.
The Contact Group participants signed the framework agreement on disengagement of forces in Donbass in late September 2016. The document set three pilot security areas: Petrovskoye in the DPR and Stanitsa Luganskaya and Zolotoye in the LPR. Each withdrawal area measures at least 2 kilometres wide and 2 kilometres deep. The parties did not rule out disengagement along the entire contact line in the future.
The disengagement was completed in the Petrovskoye and Zolotoye areas in October 2016. The DPR and the LPR repeated reported an unstable situation in these areas as Ukrainian armed forces were sighted there again. *jk*pp