Updated 2:04 p.m. Moscow Time
ILOVAISK, October 14 (RIA Novosti) – The self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is not ready to withdraw its artillery from the line of contact with the Kiev government forces, because the “silence regime” was not observed, the DPR prime minister said Tuesday.
The five-day silence regime, intended to precede heavy weaponry pullout from the line of contact in east Ukraine, expires Wednesday.
“There were no guaranteed [regime of] silence,” Alexander Zakharchenko said. “We are in a worse position than Ukraine, because we have nowhere to pull back. They [the Kiev government] have where to withdraw, but they do not do this for some reason.”
Earlier in the day, DPR said that the Ukrainian forces had violated the ceasefire, agreed by the conflicting sides on September 5, 45 times in the past 24 hours, adding that overnight shelling in southeastern Ukraine killed seven civilians and wounded at least 30 people.
On Monday, the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) released a report, saying that shelling continues in Donetsk and Luhansk regions despite the truce.
On Saturday, Zakharchenko announced that a "silence regime" was going into effect in the Donetsk region. He added that the pullout of artillery and military hardware would begin after the "silence regime" holds for five days.
An armed conflict in Ukraine's southeast began in April when Kiev launched a military operation against independence supporters in the region. Almost 3,700 people have been killed and over 8,800 have been wounded since the start of the operation, according to a UN report published on Friday.
