MINSK, July 27. /TASS/. The Contact Group seeking to resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine should spare no effort to implement the Minsk peace agreements in the current year, Ambassador Martin Sajdik, an OSCE special representative, said after the Group's meeting in Minsk on Wednesday.
"The world community expects results from the subgroups' coordinators by the autumn," Sajdik said. "We need to make an effort so as to implement the Minsk accords in the current year."
In the meantime, Sajdik noted that a crucial issue of the forces’ disengagement in the security zones remained unresolved.
"There exists another open issue, a crucial one, and it would be better if the sides would provide information on the essence of existing problems," he said. "We are not giving up hope to resolve it. I believe that next time we will go ahead in solving the issue."
Earlier, Viktoria Talakina, the press secretary of DPR envoy to the Contact Group, said that the sides had failed to negotiate a document on disengagement of the warring sides in Donbass at Wednesday’s meeting in Minsk, noting that agreements to the effect had been reached with regard to just two populated areas of Petrovskoye and Zolotoye.
On June 29, the Contact Group agreed to disengage troops in Petrovskoye and Zolotoye. The self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR respectively) should have withdrawn their forces from the contact line to a distance of two or three kilometers (terrain permitting).
Before the previous meeting, Martin Sajdik had said that a deal to disengage the warring sides near the town of Stanitsa Lugovaya should have been sealed by the next meeting (held on Wednesday).