1ST LEAD Ukrainian military, separatists to observe «Day of Silence» By …
Moscow (dpa) – Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian
separatists have vowed to enforce a one-day ceasefire Tuesday ahead
of a new round of peace talks.
The so-called “Day of Silence” was agreed last week between
Ukraine, Russia and rebel leaders with mediation from the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
“Ukraine‘s armed forces are ready,” Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak
said Monday after talks in Kyiv with his Canadian counterpart, Rob
Nicholson.
The separatists said they will also comply.
“We hope that the day of silence will go ahead despite the fact that
shelling continues right now,” Donetsk rebel leader Andrei Purgin
told Interfax Ukraine news agency.
But Purgin stressed that the ceasefire was unrelated to efforts to
hold a new round of talks later this week.
The meeting of the so-called Ukraine Contact Group, originally
planned for Tuesday, will be held “towards the end of the week,” a
source close to the negotiations told Interfax Ukraine.
Denis Pushilin, a separatist envoy, noted that negotiators had not
yet agreed on an agenda for the talks.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had said over the weekend that a
new round of talks should be held in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
French President Francois Hollande and Russian President Vladimir
Putin, who met at the weekend in Moscow, have also spoken out in
favour of a diplomatic solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
“We are doing everything to let the Contact Group meeting happen this
week,” Putin‘s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said Monday,
according to Russian news agencies.
The Ukraine Contact Group, which consists of Russia, Ukraine and the
OSCE, brokered a fragile ceasefire with the separatists in Minsk in
September.
But the ceasefire has failed to end the fighting, and about 1,000
people have died since then, according to the United Nations.