DONETSK, July 9. /TASS/. Kiev’s military over the past 24 hours 585 times opened fire on territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the military authority told the Donetsk News Agency on Saturday.
"Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military opened fire 585 times," the source said. "The enemy launched 82 and 120mm calibers mines and used grenade launchers and small arms."
Under fire were villages Zaitsevo, Shirokaya Balka and Ozeryanovka, Leninskoye near Gorlovka, Yasinovataya and its suburbs - Zhabunki, Mikhailovka and Spartak, Dojucheyevsk, villages Sosnovskoye, Sakhana and Kominternovo in southern DPR, as well as Statomikhailovka, the Pertrov district, western and northern suburbs of Donetsk.
All data on violations of the Minsk agreements have been presented to observers of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and to representatives of the Joint Coordination Center for Ceasefire Monitoring.
On June 1, heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky announced collecting of signatures under a petition to the UN Security Council about the violations of the Minsk agreements, for which the Ukrainian side is responsible. The DPR head pointed to the continuing violations of the ceasefire regime and delays with the exchange of prisoners as it is stipulated by Minsk agreements on the "all for all" basis. LPR called for "attacking on the diplomatic field" to "make Poroshenko observe the obligations undertaken in Minsk." On June 25, DPR reported more than 260,000 people had signed the petition.
Earlier, Denis Pushilin, the chief negotiator for the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said that the parties to the talks plan to sign an agreement on disengagement of forces at the next round of talks in Minsk. He said that monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and officers of the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) will be tasked to verify the parties’ pullout of their forces from the contact line and monitor the ceasefire regime observance.
On June 29, the Trilateral Contact Group on the settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine reached an agreement on disengagement of forces in the settlements of Petrovskoye and Zolotoye. Under the agreement, each party is to pull out its forces two kilometers from the contact line. Vladislav Deinego, the chief negotiator for the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic, said the agreement envisages complete demilitarization of this area.
Apart from that, the security subgroup plans to prepare an agreement on disengagement of forces near the settlement of Stanitsa Luganskaya by July 13.
On July 6, Kiev’s representative in the Contact Group’s political subgroup Olga Ayvazovskaya said Ukraine thinks local elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) are not likely to be held within 2016. Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) Speaker Andrey Parubiy said earlier that there are no prospects for positive consideration of the draft law on Donbass elections at the Ukrainian parliament.
The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine comprising senior representatives from Russia, Ukraine and the European security watchdog OSCE on February 12, 2015, signed a 13-point Package of Measures to fulfil the September 2014 Minsk agreements. The package was agreed with the leaders of the Normandy Four, namely Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine.
The Package of Measures, known as Minsk-2, envisaged a ceasefire between Ukrainian government forces and people’s militias in the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Lugansk starting from February 15 and subsequent withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of engagement. The deal also laid out a roadmap for a lasting settlement in Ukraine, including local elections and constitutional reform to give more autonomy to the war-torn eastern regions. To spur up the work of the Contact Group, four working subgroups were set up within it on four key aspects of the Minsk agreements, namely on issues of security; on political issues; on issues of prisoner exchange and refuges; and on social, humanitarian and economic aspects.