KIEV, October 5. /TASS/. More than 1,000 Ukrainian troops have been released since the beginning of the ceasefire regime in eastern Ukraine, Vladimir Polevoi, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said on Sunday.

“Thanks to this truce, combat operations and attacks on our positions stopped,” he told a briefing. However he claimed that cases of the ceasefire regime violations had been reported from the vicinity of the Donetsk airport, near the towns of Debaltsevo (Donetsk region) and Schastye (Lugansk region).

He said that two Ukrainian servicemen had been killed and six more had been wounded in eastern Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

Memorandum on ceasefire regime

On September 20, the Contact Group on Ukraine, which met in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk, adopted a memorandum on ceasefire regime. The document has nine provisions, including a ban of the use of all types of weapons and both parties’ withdrawal of heavy weapons with a caliber of more than 100 mm at a distance of 15 kilometres from the line of contact.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is to control the observance of the ceasefire regime.

The previous Contact Group meeting in Minsk (on September 5) yielded a protocol on peace settlement in southeastern Ukraine. The key provisions of the 12-provison document were agreements on ceasefire and exchange of prisoners of war.