MOSCOW, May 1. /TASS/. Interior Ministry officers of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) have seized some 200 units of weapons and over 70 boxes with various ammunition during a special operation in the city of Krasnodon, LPR Interior Minister Igor Kornet said Friday.
"Investigative activities are being conducted, so we are not disclosing details yet," LuganskInformCenter quoted Kornet as saying.
He specified that the seized items included 88 assault rifles, 46 grenade launchers, 15 flamethrowers, 13 sniper rifles and two machineguns.
According to the LPR head’s decree, "all armed formations not making part of the People's Militia of the Lugansk People’s Republic, units of territorial defense and law enforcement bodies who failed to voluntarily surrender" by April 4 all armaments, ammunition, poisonous and explosive substances they have, will from April 5, 2015 "be declared illegal and be subject to legal prosecution."
On February 12, participants of the Contact Group on settlement of the situation in Donbass signed in Minsk a document earlier agreed with leaders of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine), which envisioned cessation of fire, withdrawal of heavy armaments from the contact line as well as political settlement measures, including establishment of working subgroups as priority tasks.
The subgroups will focus on four areas: economic issues and restoration of facilities; refugees, internally displaced persons and humanitarian assistance; political issues; security issues.
Clashes between Ukrainian troops and local militias during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April 2014, to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People's republics and constitute parts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, have left thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee Ukraine’s embattled east.
The parties to the Ukrainian conflict mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) agreed on a ceasefire at talks in September 2014 in the Belarusian capital Minsk two days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed his plan to settle the situation in the east of Ukraine.
The ceasefire has reportedly been numerously violated since. There have been several meetings of the Trilateral Contact Group on east Ukrainian settlement comprising representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the OSCE and of the Normandy Four aimed at finding ways to diplomatically and politically settle the intra-Ukrainian conflict.