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OSCE official calls situation in Donbas stable but unpredictable

Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug told TASS there are a lot of weapons behind the withdrawal line but not in storage places "which causes a lot of tension and doesn’t create trust"

OSCE Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug EPA/ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO

OSCE Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug

© EPA/ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO

VIENNA, December 15. /TASS/. The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine regards the situation in the Donbas conflict zone as considerably stable but unpredictable, Deputy Chief Monitor Alexander Hug told TASS on Tuesday.

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"We are now in the face of considerable stability, however, with risks of fighting flaring up at one or the other point," Hug said. "The situation remains very unpredictable in term of where the fighting starts and where it ends."

He said Gorlovka, Shirokino, Pavlopol and the area around the Donetsk airport remained "the scenes of fighting but in the other areas there has been significant improvement if you compare now with middle of August, for instance."

Speaking about withdrawal of weapons from the contact line in Donbas, Hug said the SMM would continue monitoring the process.

"We see a lot of weapons behind the withdrawal line but not in storage places, which causes a lot of tension and doesn’t create trust," Hug said. "As long as they are not within the 15-kilometer zone, they don’t violate the [Minsk] agreements."

"Type of weapons used in the fighting is different than it was in the summer. That would suggest that either these weapons have indeed been withdrawn or that they are not withdrawn but not used," he added.

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