MOSCOW, April 21. /TASS/. Kiev’s actions demonstrate its inability to observe the Minsk agreements, Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said on Tuesday.
"Instead of paying pensions, as stipulated by the Minsk agreements, Kiev is intensifying the economic blockade of Donbass. Instead of a constitutional reform, it is staging another wave of mobilization in Ukraine. Instead of a ceasefire regime - regular shelling of living quarters. Instead of pulling out heavy weapons , it is pulling them back to the line of engagement," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.
Commenting on reports about the beginning of a fifth wave of mobilization, Zakharchenko said, "Kiev has actually announced preparations for the beginning of combat operations."
"It once again proves that Poroshenko and Co.’s peacefulness is just a mock," he said. "On the backdrop of speculation about the Minsk agreements and peace, the Kiev regime is militarizing the country. Whom Kiev is going to fight with? And hence there is a question for the Western leaders - those who support the Kiev authorities: why are Western countries helping militarize Ukraine while insisting on the implementation of the Minsk agreements? Do they think supplies of arms and sending military instructors will promote peace?"
On Monday, Ukraine’s chief of the general staff, Viktor Muzhenko, said the country had embarked on the preparations for a fifth wave of mobilization. He said that 50,000 servicemen had been recruited in the previous round of mobilization.
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.
Concurrently, the Belarusian capital hosted a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine involving Ukraine’s ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Kiev’s special representative for humanitarian issues Viktor Medvedchuk, the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, and Russia’s ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov and OSCE’s envoy Heidi Tagliavini, both acting as mediators.
As a result, a package of measures was adopted to implement the Minsk agreements. It 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.