PRESS RELEASE
Contact Group Meeting Agrees to Sept. 1 Ceasefire
Aug. 27, 2015 (EIRNS)—The Contact Group on Ukraine meeting ended in Minsk, yesterday, with the announcement that both sides agreed to a cease-fire to take effect on Sept. 1. According to TASS, OSCE representative Ambassador Martin Sajdik said it is necessary to do everything possible to ensure security of schools on the disengagement line between east Ukrainian militiamen and Ukraine’s troops. The representatives of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk republics both confirmed the agreement, in contrast to the Aug. 3-4 meeting which failed to reach an agreement on weapons withdrawals.
"The proposal received a response from all sides, and there is hope that shelling will be stopped from September 1," said the LPR’s Vladislav Deinego.
D.P.R. representative Denis Pushilin also expressed guarded optimism.
"Currently there is progress in the negotiating process, many constructive thoughts and proposals have been voiced. We have the hope that it will be put in writing. On the whole, I would like to say that there is progress and continuation of the working progress on all subgroups,"
Pushilin said.
"As regards specific things, a rather balanced proposal to completely stop shelling by September 1 has been voiced. It won the support from nearly all parties,"
he said. It remains to be seen, of course, whether or not Right Sector and other such groups will abide by it.
War warnings still persist, however. The DPR military spokesman, Eduard Basurin, said in a briefing yesterday, that the Kiev regime had brought up 4,000 troops with 60 tanks, other armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery and other equipment up to the village of Chasov Yar about 20km from the line of contact. In Kiev, Oleksandr Turchynov, the chief of the regime’s National Security and Defense Council, claimed today that Russia’s Southern Military District has created a "a powerful ground force in Donbas based on two army corps which are prepared for active offensive operations, a force of up to 35,000 men, with 9,000 of them already in the two republics." The regime has been saying this for weeks, but has yet to provide any tangible evidence of such a Russian troop presence inside the two breakaway republics.
