MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday denied media reports that Russian and Ukrainian military officials were meeting in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Region to discuss a buffer zone separating the Kiev government forces and the militia.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry rejects a report by the Reuters agency about an alleged meeting of Russian and Ukrainian officials to mark out a ‘buffer zone’ between the DPR [Donetsk People's Republic], LPR [Luhansk People's Republic] and the Ukrainian side,” the ministry said in a statement.
“All issues related to the ceasefire regime are being discussed by the Ukrainian side and representatives of separate districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions,” the ministry said. “The role of Russia, as a member of the Contact Group, is to render all necessary assistance to this process jointly with the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Euripe].”
On Friday, Reuters reported, citing Ukrainian military sources, that senior Ukrainian and Russian military officials met earlier in the day "to mark out a proposed 30-kilometre (19-mile) "buffer zone" in eastern Ukraine from which government forces and independence supporters are expected to remove their weapons.
On September 19, representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE agreed at a meeting in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to establish the buffer zone on the current line of contact between the Kiev forces and independence supporters in eastern Ukraine.
The agreement, which builds on the ceasefire agreement reached at the September 5 meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine, obliges the sides to pull heavy weaponry out of residential areas and to move their artillery at least 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) away from the contact line.
The area will be subject to OSCE monitoring.
