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Contact Group on Donbass settlement urges to ensure ceasefire in area - Olifer

According to press secretary, the disruption of the Donetsk water purification plant is "the result of ceasefire violations."

KIEV, February 25. /TASS/. The Contact Group on the settlement in eastern Ukraine has urged the Donbass areas not controlled by Kiev to ensure the ceasefire in order to restore the Donetsk water purification plant, press secretary of Kiev’s envoy to the Minsk talks Darya Olifer wrote on her Facebook page.

"The trilateral Contact Group has urged particular regions of the Donetsk Region to ensure the ceasefire is enforced is order to carry out repair. The trilateral Contact Group has urged particular regions of the Donetsk Region to investigate accidents related to shelling attacks on an unarmed patrol of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) and at attack on a combat drone of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission," Olifer wrote.

According to press secretary, the disruption of the Donetsk water purification plant is "the result of ceasefire violations."

The Contact Group has confirmed the obligations assumed at the meeting on February 15, 2017 in Minsk, she added.

Earlier Eduard Basurin, defense spokesman of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said that militants from Ukrainian nationalist armed units had captured facilities of the Donetsk water purification plant in early hours of Saturday.

The water purification plant is located between Avdeyevka and Yasinovataya. The plant supplies water to settlements on either side of the front line, including Donetsk, Yasinovataya, Vasilyevka and Spartak controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), and Avdeyevka, Krasnogorovka and Verkhnetoretskoye controlled by Kiev.

On February 1, members the Contact Group on settling the conflict in eastern Ukraine held a meeting in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, demanding that hostilities in Donbass be stopped, weapons and military hardware be withdrawn from the line of contact area by February 5. However, the Ukrainian military has not implemented the decisions of the Contact Group.

On February 15, the Contact Group made a decision that all weapons banned by the Minsk agreements should be withdrawn from the line of contact by February 20. Foreign ministers of the four member states of the Normandy Quartet (Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine) upheld this initiative at a meeting held on February 18.

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