Both Sides Ready to Observe Ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine - OSCE

Ukrainian servicemen of the `Donbass battalion` during a training session at a shooting range near the eastern city of Mariupol, Ukraine, 01 April 2015. EPA/BGNES

Both sides in the conflict in eastern Ukraine have shown readiness to observe the truce, an OSCE official said on Thursday.

The pro-Russian separatists at the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and Kiev government forces have displayed readiness to stick to the ceasefire agreement, according to the deputy head of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine Alexander Hug.

Russian news agency TASS quoted Hug as saying at briefing in the city of Donetsk OSCE observers have started to compile lists of equipment withdrawn by Ukraine government troops and self-proclaimed republics’ militias from the contact line in Donbass region. The OSCE mission began drawing those lists itself in order to provide documentary evidence of the weapons’ withdrawal after both sides in the conflict failed to do so.

Hug's statement comes just days after former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, retired General Wesley Clark claimed pro-Moscow rebels backed by Russian forces were allegedly planning a new offensive in eastern Ukraine that could be launched within a matter of months.

A renewed offensive from the east could take place following Orthodox Easter, on April 12, and most probably before 8 May, Clark said in a presentation at The Atlantic Council in Washington D.C. on 30 March, citing local sources he spoke with on a recent fact-finding mission to Ukraine.

 

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