KIEV, March 10. /TASS/. Ukraine’s army has all the possibilities to pull its heavy weapons back to the front line promptly, Andrei Lysenko, a spokesman for the headquarters of Kiev’s force operation, said on Tuesday.
"The resources we have in the front line, even after we have pulled out heavy weapons to a certain distance, are enough to stop the enemy and concurrently pull back our heavy weapons to rebuff the enemy," he told the television Channel 5.
He said the Ukrainian army had "possibilities to marshal forces and train personnel," which was currently being done.
Earlier, spokesman for the defence ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic /DPR/ Eduard Basurin said that almost all of Ukraine’s heavy weapons were staying at a distance of 20-30 kilometres from the actual line of contact and "can be pulled back to their former positions in a span of a couple of hours." He noted that Kiev had never officially said that it had pulled out its weapons to distances fixed in the Minsk agreements of February 12.
Basurin also said that DPR’s reconnaissance was reporting a build-up of Ukrainian troops in the security zone. "The latest reports came yesterdayabout Ukrainian troops in the vicinity of the settlement of Artemovsk located north of Debaltsevo, close to the line of contact," he said. "More than 200 armoured vehicles, nine Uragan multiple launch rocket systems and six 122-and 152-millimetre artillery systems are now deployed near Artemovsk, which violates all agreements.".