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DPR defence ministry reports 34 episodes of shelling by Kiev troops

MOSCOW, March 21. /TASS/. Thirty-four episodes of shelling by Kiev troops at militia positions and settlements of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) have been fixed over the past 24 hours, republic’s defence ministry reports.

There have been no early reports about casualties among the population, but destruction in the private sector has been reported, the Donetsk News Agency quotes the ministry as saying.

"The enemy attacked both positions of militias and residential areas," the ministry reported, adding that the cities of Gorlovka, Donetsk and Lozovoye were also shelled.

Marathon talks between the Normandy Four leaders - Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - in Minsk on February 12 yielded a package of agreements, which in particular envisaged ceasefire between the Ukrainian conflicting sides starting from midnight on February 15.

The package of measures envisages the 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.

The final document says that the Ukrainian troops are to be pulled back away from the current line of engagement and the militias of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, from the engagement line set by the Minsk Memorandum of September 19, 2014.