DONETSK, October 9. /TASS/. Ukraine on Wednesday disrupted the pullback of forces in the area of Petrovskoye, thus considerably worsening the situation at this section of the disengagement line in Donbass, the Donetsk Republic’s Foreign Minister Natalya Nikonorova said.
"The Ukrainian military not just upset the process of eliminating violations concerning the disengagement of forces at the pilot sections of the line Petrovskoye-Bogdanovka and Zolotoye, but also opened fire with small arms at the area of the village of Petrovskoye, thus endangering the lives of representatives of the Joint Control and Coordination Center, members of the OSCE Joint Monitoring Mission and mass media workers," she said.
Nikonorova pointed out that for their part both self-proclaimed republics "have fully complied with all requirements and confirmed the readiness to resume the disengagement."
"However, Ukraine has cynically disrupted this process and seriously escalated tensions along the line Petrovskoye-Bogdanovka," Nikonorova said. "The Ukrainian authorities have been trying to excuse the disruption of the agreements by using far-fetched demands for observing a seven-day ceasefire, although they are to blame for violating truce themselves."
Nikonorova suspects that one of the likely reasons behind the disruption of this process may be the "inability of Ukraine’s new leadership to put in order the vertical chain of command and the radically minded groups in Ukrainian society, which certainly has a destructive effect on Kiev’s implementation of the Minsk Accords."
"We regard such behavior by the Ukrainian authorities as categorically unacceptable and urge the guarantors of the Minsk Accords to exert pressure on Kiev to make it, first, comply with the direct instructions from the political advisers of the Normandy Quartet and joint agreements achieved by the Contact Group, and second, restore order to the Ukrainian political establishment and society, because amid the imbalance we currently observe in Ukraine Kiev’s full compliance with the Minsk Accords looks ever more ephemeral," Nikonorova said.
After today’s disruption of the attempt to disengage forces in the area of Petrovskoye the DPR mission at the Joint Control and Coordination Center said that another attempt would follow on Thursday, October 10.