MOSCOW, January 20. /TASS/. The Ukrainian side has confirmed receiving a letter with Putin’s proposals, which is already good, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov said on Tuesday. According to him, Kiev is ready to take Putin’s plan as a basis and work on it to adjust its separate clauses.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a letter to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on January 15 with a proposal of a plan for withdrawal of heavy artillery from the contact line between the Ukrainian security forces and people’s militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) in the south-east of Ukraine.

“Russia has been exerting consistent effort in recent days as a mediator with the aim of the conflict resolution. Thus, overnight from Thursday to Friday, Vladimir Putin sent a written message to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, offering both parties to the conflict a concrete plan of heavy artillery pullout. The Ukrainian president received the message on Friday morning,” Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on January 18. He said then: “Regrettably, the Ukrainian side has turned down the plan and has proposed nothing instead. More to it, it has resumed combat operations.”

“As a result, we are witnessing ongoing shelling of Donetsk and an absolute degradation of the situation in eastern Ukraine,” he said.

Commenting on reports coming from south-eastern Ukraine, Peskov said, “Moscow is extremely worried over the developments. They are again shelling residential quarters in Donetsk, people are dying again.”

Ukrainian presidential adviser Yuri Biryukov said earlier Tuesday that the Ukrainian military received orders to open massive fire on the positions of the militias in the military operation zone in the south-east of the country.