Ukrainian forces and pro-Kremlin militias were due yesterday to pull back under a new peace plan, but NATO’s top military commander said that there was a ceasefire “in name only” on the ground.
The warring sides are required to move back fighters and weaponry and create a buffer zone along the frontline that splits the separatist east of Ukraine from the rest of the ex-Soviet state.
The withdrawal and an accompanying monitoring mission by teams from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) security body are at the heart of a nine-point plan struck early on Saturday in the Belarussian capital, Minsk.
Photo: AFP
The deal is meant to reinforce a truce forged on Sept. 5 in a bid to stem five months of conflict that has claimed nearly 3,000 lives and threatened Ukraine’s very survival.
Reporters said the situation on the ground appeared calm early yesterday, but it was not immediately known whether there had been any movement of government troops or rebels.
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe US Air Force General Philip Breedlove on Saturday said that continued clashes had shown the two-week-old agreement to be a ceasefire “in name only” and accused Russia of keeping soldiers on Ukrainian soil to bolster the insurgents.
The truce was “still there in name, but what is happening on the ground is quite a different story,” he said on the sidelines of a NATO meeting symbolically convened in the ex-Soviet satellite state of Lithuania.
However, he struck a more optimistic note when he spoke of Saturday’s Minsk agreement.
“It is our sincere hope and desire that ... the two combatants can come to agreement to again get to a ceasefire situation,” he said.
The Minsk memorandum — signed by the warring parties and endorsed by both Moscow’s Kiev ambassador and an OSCE envoy — also requires the withdrawal of all “foreign armed groups” and mercenaries from the conflict zone.
Russia denies having any forces in Ukraine. It says a number of its troops captured by Kiev’s forces must have accidently strayed across the border.
However, Breedlove insisted NATO intelligence showed that the Russian forces “are still inside Ukraine.”
Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma — representing Kiev throughout the stuttering efforts to resolve the crisis — also said that the Minsk deal would fall apart without the creation of a 30km demilitarized zone.
Territory under rebel control would be left open to their administration under a temporary self-rule plan adopted by lawmakers in Kiev on Tuesday, in tandem with legislation that grants amnesty to fighters on both sides.
Swiss President and OSCE head Didier Burkhalter hailed the Minsk deal as “a significant step toward making the ceasefire sustainable and an important contribution in the efforts to peacefully settle the crisis.”
However, the pact only came together after all sides agreed to leave the most divisive political issues over the status of the rebel-held areas in Ukraine’s rustbelt for future negotiation.
It also overlooked unceasing flareups in violence that have claimed the lives of 35 Ukrainians soldiers and civilians since the original truce was declared.
A series of groundshaking blasts tore through a Soviet-era munitions plant on the outskirts of the main rebel stronghold city of Donetsk on Saturday after it was hit by artillery fire, local officials said.
Rebels on Saturday handed over 34 Ukrainian government soldiers in exchange for 38 separatist militants in the latest prisoner swap.
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