The militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) on Monday fired a rocket signalizing their readiness to start the planned troop disengagement near the settlement of Petrivske, a Sputnik correspondent reported
PETRIVSKE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th November, 2019) The militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) on Monday fired a rocket signalizing their readiness to start the planned troop disengagement near the settlement of Petrivske, a Sputnik correspondent reported.
Ruslan Yakubov, the head of the DPR representative office in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the ceasefire as well as representatives of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and DPR command are currently at the scene.
The signal rocket was fired at 10:00 GMT, but the Ukrainian forces have not yet responded with a similar signal.
On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy initially said that the Ukrainian army and the DPR militia should begin troop pullout near Petrivske on November 4. The breakaway republic swiftly confirmed its readiness to start the disengagement at the set date.
The next day, Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, however, said that he expected the process to be postponed over alleged ceasefire violations. The DPR reiterated its commitment to start the pullout as scheduled.
On Friday, both the Ukrainian military and the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Luhansk (LPR) announced that they had completed the disengagement of troops and military hardware near the village of Zolote.
Donbas, an area with a predominantly Russian-speaking population, has been engulfed in conflict since 2014. Back then, the Ukrainian authorities unleashed a military operation against the self-proclaimed republics in the region that refused to recognize the new government in Kiev, which came to power after what they considered to be a coup.
