LUGANSK, June 24. /TASS/. Ukraine’s army has pulled tanks and howitzers to the contact line in Donbass, in violation of the Minsk agreements, Andrei Marochko, a spokesman for the defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), said on Sunday.
"Thus, according to available information, a train with 13 tanks of the Ukrainian army’s 59th tank brigade arrived to the Rubezhnoye railway station overnight to June 22. After that, the tanks were moved to the settlement of Dmitrovka," LuganskInformCenter quoted him as saying.
On the following night, according to Marochko, eighteen D-20 152mm howitzers reached Rubezhnoye to be later mover to the settlement of Novy Aidar. "It is not ruled out that the Ukrainian side is using rotation as a pretext to deploy heavy weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements near the contact line," he said, adding that the LPR defense ministry called on the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to "monitor the area more tightly to expose the prohibited weapons and have them withdrawn to a proper distance when exposed."
Apart from that, in his words, the Ukrainian army continues to use unmanned aerial vehicles near the contact line, which is also banned by the Minsk agreements.
Under agreements reached at the Contact Group meetings in Minsk, only monitors from the OSCE SMM are allowed to use drones in areas adjacent to the contact line.
On the initiative of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the so-called Easter ceasefire came into effect in the Donbass area from March 30. However, as was the case with the previous ceasefire, shelling attacks have not stopped.