LUGANSK, February 11. /TASS/. The Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to deploy armored vehicles near Donbass settlements, violating additional measures to ensure the ceasefire, the People’s Militia of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) said in a statement on Friday.

"In the area of responsibility of the 79th Brigade, two BTR-4 armored personnel carriers were detected in a residential area in the Teploye settlement and a BTR-40 armored personnel carrier was seen near the [town of] Schastye, while a BRDM-2 armored reconnaissance vehicle of the 24th Brigade was identified near Popasnaya," the LuganskInformCenter news agency quoted the statement as saying.

The LPR military pointed out that the Ukrainian military’s activities to deploy weapons and military equipment to settlements ran counter to paragraph 3 of the Additional Measures to Ensure and Control the Ceasefire.

The Ukrainian military used electronic warfare to prevent the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) from using unmanned aerial vehicles in the town of Schastye and the Smolyaninovo settlement, the LPR military added.

Additional measures ensuring the Donbass ceasefire have been in effect in Donbass since July 27, 2020. Under the agreement, the parties to the conflict are banned from using weapons and drones, deploying heavy weapons to populated localities and adding engineering equipment at their positions. Tensions in Donbass started to escalate on January 9, with the Ukrainian military conducting shelling attacks along the entire line of contact.