Less than an hour after the arrangement entered into force, authorities in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic told Sputnik that Ukrainian forces had fired grenade launchers in the direction of its capital, Donetsk.
"Since midnight, we’ve detected automatic grenade launcher attacks in the direction of Donetsk. No artillery fire has been registered starting at 00:00 [21:00GMT]. We detected artillery fire by Ukrainian forces before midnight," a spokesperson at the DPR Defense Ministry said.
The spokesperson said Ukrainian troops last fired 120-mm mortars at Donetsk city suburbs at 11:20 p.m. local time (20:20GMT). The spokesman for the Luhansk People’s Militia, Andriy Marochko, told Sputnik the truce was holding.
The pause in hostilities was brokered earlier this week by a trilateral contact group, composed of Russian, Ukrainian and OSCE mediators.
Officials in the breakaway Luhansk and Donetsk regions vowed to honor the pact. Ukraine's Defense Ministry spokesman Andriy Lysenko argued on Friday that no final deal had been made but added they would go along with the plan.
