LUGANSK, March 8. /TASS/. The Ukrainian military shelled the positions of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) eleven times in the past 24 hours, an LPR security source said on Wednesday.
"Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military eleven times violated ceasefire," the militia’s representative said. "They launched 302 mines and grenades on the republic’s territory."
In late January, the situation along the line of contact in Donbass deteriorated dramatically. The Contact Group for settling the situation in eastern Ukraine announced that weapons banned by the Minsk agreements should be withdrawn from the line of contact by February 5, but the decision was not implemented.
On February 15, the Contact Group made another decision stipulating that all weapons banned by the Minsk agreements should be withdrawn from the line of contact by February 20.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 that took place on February 18. However, according to the self-proclaimed republics, Kiev has been hampering the implementation of this decision.
At the recent meeting of the Contact Group, held on March 1, the parties agreed to resume the weapons withdrawal process on March 7.