DONETSK (Sputnik) – The situation in southeastern Ukraine, where a ceasefire has been in force since February 15, is stabilizing and refugees are beginning to return home, the self-proclaimed people's republic of Donetsk (DPR) parliamentary speaker Andrei Purgin has announced.
"The situation is more or less calm, residents are gradually returning to [Donbas] cities," Purgin said on Tuesday, as quoted by the Donetsk News Agency.
According to the DPR parliamentary speaker, the main current objective of Donbas authorities is to stop the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the region, which has suffered greatly as a result of a military operation launched by Kiev against local independence supporters last spring.
Russia, in cooperation with the Red Cross, has helped thousands of eastern Ukrainian refugees who were left homeless amid the fighting, which has subsided after the ceasefire, agreed upon in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, last month, came into force.
Since August 2014, Russia has also sent over 20,000 metric tons of food, water, clothes, medicine, power generators and building materials to the residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed people's republics.
