MOSCOW, September 6. /TASS/. Kiev’s military violated nine times the ceasefire regime over the past 24 hours, the defence ministry at the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic [DPR] said on Sunday.
Most intensive shelling was reported from the Oktyabrsky settlement, where the military used arms and mortars of 82 and 120mm calibre.
The Luhansk People’s Republic [LPR] said on Sunday the Ukrainian Armed Forces were responsible for two violations of the ceasefire regime.
Minsk accords on settlement of crisis in Ukraine
A peace deal struck on February 12 in Minsk, Belarus, by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France envisaged a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and people’s militias starting from February 15, followed by withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of military engagement and prisoner release.
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 kilometres wide for artillery systems with a calibre of 100 mm or more, a zone of security 70 kilometres wide for multiple rocket launchers and a zone 140 kilometres wide for multiple rocket launchers Tornado-S, Uragan and Smerch and for Tochka-U tactical rocket systems.
The Ukrainian forces and the self-defence forces of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics [DPR and LPR] have repeatedly accused each other of violating ceasefire and other points of the Minsk agreements. On September 5, Donetsk authorities reported death of a civilian in a shell explosion and injuries of another two people.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA], the violence in Ukraine has killed 6,500 people in the past year, wounded 16,000 and left 5 million people in need of humanitarian aid. With more than 1.3 million registered IDPs, Ukraine has now the ninth largest number of internally displaced in the world, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.