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Ukrainian troops disguised as Donetsk’s militias hamper OSCE mission’s work - spokesman

"We have recorded facts when these groups hampered the international monitoring mission’s work in the buffer zone, allegedly on behalf of militias," self-proclaimed DPR, Eduard Basurin said

MOSCOW, January 9. /TASS/. Ukrainian sabotage groups disguised as militia fighters hamper OSCE observers’ work near the village of Vidnoye located in the buffer zone, the spokesman for the defence ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Eduard Basurin, said on Saturday.

UKRAINE CRISIS

"We have information that sabotage groups from the 501st separate battalion of the (Ukrainian Armed Forces’) Marine Brigade are preparing provocations against members of the OSCE mission (the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe)," the Donetsk news agency cited Basurin as saying. "We have recorded facts when these groups hampered the international monitoring mission’s work in the buffer zone, allegedly on behalf of militias."

Besides, Basurin said that the so-called "elite of the Ukrainian army" were involved in looting and also exchanged fire in the neutral zone.

On Friday, the DPR Defence Ministry said that marines of Ukraine’s Armed Forces and gunmen of the Right Sector far-right organisation (outlawed in Russia) were exchanging fire near the village of Lebedinskoye on the outskirts of the port city of Mariupol.

On December 22, 2015 the Contact Group resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine urged the sides to the conflict to observe a full and overwhelming ceasefire in Donbass - the sixth ceasefire agreement since the autumn of 2014. In spite of the agreement, the DPR defence ministry still records episodes of shelling by the Ukrainian armed forces.

The Minsk agreements, approved in the Belarussian capital on February 12, 2015 by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France alongside the Contact Group envisaged a ceasefire between Ukrainian forces and people’s militias starting from February 15. The 13-point package of measures adopted in Minsk contains withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line disengaging the Kiev troops and militias of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as measures on long-term political settlement in Donbass.

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