On Monday, the sides to the conflict in Donbas were due to sign an agreement to pull back weapons with a caliber of less than 100mm. However, a source in the talks on the weaponry withdrawal said that Kiev refused to remove its weaponry from four specific areas, while the militias demanded that the entire contact line be cleared of such weapons.
"Kiev is doing everything it can already for the fourth time and at the last minute [of negotiations] not to withdraw its hardware armed with 100mm [from the contact line]. Kiev has proposed adding an exception to withdrawing hardware from the entire line of contact. [Kiev] tried to make amendments that would allow it another 60 days to withdraw its hardware and continue shelling," Denis Pushilin said on Russia’s Rossiya-24 television channel.
He said that these type of tactics are purely "an attempt to return the situation to war."
An agreement urging the sides to the Ukraine conflict to pull back weapons with a caliber of less than 100-mm was supported in July by the leaders of Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine, the so-called Normandy Quartet. It also envisaged the creation of a nearly 19-mile demilitarized zone along the contact line that separates Kiev-led forces and local militia in eastern Ukraine.
On July 28, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the agreement between the warring sides would be signed by August 3 and implemented within 10 days.
The immediate withdrawal of heavy artillery from the contact line and a ceasefire were stipulated in the Minsk peace deal signed by the Normandy Quarter in February, however, both sides have since repeatedly accused each other of violating the agreement.
