Over 20 People Killed, Nearly 100 Injured in Donbass Since Start of 2017 - OSCE

Over 20 people have been killed and nearly 100 injured in Donbass hostilities since the beginning of 2017 due to the use of heavy weapons, a spokesperson for the press service of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine told Sputnik Thursday.

DONETSK (Sputnik) — According to the spokesperson, from January 1 to March 29, the SMM confirmed the information about 116 casualties among civilians, including 21 deaths.

The SMM also confirmed that the sides continued using weapons banned by the Minsk agreements.

On March 1, a source at the talks of the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine told Sputnik that the sides had reached a new agreement on the withdrawal of banned heavy weaponry from the contact line in Donbass. However, on March 7, Russia's envoy to the Contact Group on Ukraine Boris Gryzlov said that the latest agreement on disengagement of forces in Stanytsia Luganska in eastern Ukraine had been derailed by Kiev authorities.

Kiev launched a military operation against the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) in 2014, when the two regions refused to recognize the new Ukrainian government that came to power in what they perceive to be a coup. The sides to the conflict continue to exchange fire, despite the ceasefire deal, reached in Minsk in February 2015 and brokered by the so-called Normandy Format comprising Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine.