All news

Donetsk republic defense ministry reports no violations of ceasefire overnight

The last violation reported was shelling of a coal mine near the town of Kirovskoye at around 8 p.m. local time

MOSCOW, February 17. /TASS/. No violation of ceasefire agreement was documented during the night in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), the defense ministry of Ukraine's unrecognized republic said Tuesday.

The last violation reported was shelling of a coal mine near the town of Kirovskoye at around 20:00, local time. The mine was reportedly shelled with D-30 howitzers, cannons and self-propelled artillery systems.

On February 12, negotiations bringing together Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko were held in the Belarusian capital Minsk. The talks lasted for over 14 hours.

Simultaneously, a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement was held in Minsk, bringing together former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma and Kiev’s special representative for humanitarian issues Viktor Medvedchuk, both representing the Ukrainian side, alongside representatives of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), Denis Pushilin and Vladislav Deinego, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) special envoy to Ukraine, Heidi Tagliavini, and Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, who acts as a mediator.

As a result, a package of measures on implementing the Minsk agreements was adopted, including on ceasefire in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions starting February 15, heavy weaponry withdrawal and long-term political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.

The package of measures envisages pullback of all heavy weapons by both parties to locations equidistant from the disengagement line in order to create a security zone at least 50 kilometers wide for artillery systems with a caliber of 100 mm or more, a zone of security 70 kilometers wide for multiple rocket launchers and a zone 140 kilometers wide for multiple rocket launchers Tornado-S, Uragan and Smerch and the tactical rocket systems Tochka-U.