The Contact Group held an extraordinary video meeting concerning the escalating situation at the line of contact. The participants reviewed the results of the meeting of the working subgroup for security, the DPR MFA reports.
“The main issue on the agenda of this extraordinary meeting was to discuss the sharp escalation at the line of contact and take all necessary measures to stop it. That is, those very additional monitoring measures for the indefinite ceasefire, which has been in force since July 21, 2019. Ukraine intentionally has been refusing to sign them for almost six months,” Natalya Nikonorova said.
The DPR plenipotentiary called on all the participants to focus on negotiating and approving the package of additional measures, as this is the only thing that is of paramount importance at the moment and will be the long-awaited result of the work of the Contact Group.
“This unscheduled meeting would have made sense if the vital measures for ensuring the safety of the lives and health of Donbass civilians had been finally approved. However, the representatives of Kiev played out yet another theater of the absurd. For example, Mr. Reznikov, a Kiev representative, claimed that there had not been any “urgent situation” occurring at the line of contact. Then why was Ukraine declaring so persistently on the media about the urgency of assembling the Contact Group?
We agreed to the extra meeting exclusively to put an end to AFU attacks, which lead to human casualties. The situation has been escalating since March 14, when the first victim was reported in our territory this year. It has been long since we have had that many civilian casualties in such a short period: 22 wounded and four dead.
However, instead of implementing the indefinite and full-scale ceasefire agreed by the Contact Group on July 17, 2019, Ukraine invents some “intervals of quiet”, which its own armed groups violate, like the comprehensive ceasefire itself,” Natalya Nikonorova reported the details.