Ukrainians Agree to Halt Shelling as Key to Pullback Plan
Ukraine’s government agreed to halt
shelling for the second time in three days to open the way for
the creation of a buffer zone agreed in a truce deal last month.
“A so-called ‘silence regime,’ during which military
actions and shelling in the anti-terrorist operation zone must
be stopped, has been announced again since 6:00 p.m. local
time,” Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council said on
its website yesterday.
The agreement happened after an Oct. 5 halt to firing by
the government wasn’t reciprocated. While fighting has ebbed
since the government in Kyiv and pro-Russian insurgents signed a
truce a month ago in Belarus, skirmishes continued daily.
President Petro Poroshenko said last week that shelling must
stop for 24 hours for the government to pull its troops back and
create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) buffer zone under the truce
agreement.
While rebels shelled government troops five times in and
around the city of Debaltsevo in Donetsk region following the
start of the “silent regime” agreement yesterday, the groups
attacking were not under control of the main separatist
leadership, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Vladyslav
Seleznyov said yesterday.
Earlier, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said
five soldiers and three civilians had been killed in Donetsk and
the neighboring Luhansk region by separatist shells, and that
incoming fire was increasing in intensity. There was no
independent confirmation of his account.
In the city of Donetsk, shelling stopped at around 6:30
p.m. after incoming rounds were heard earlier in the afternoon,
the city council said in a statement on its website. It said
four civilians had been killed and 10 wounded on Oct. 6.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Volodymyr Verbyany in Kyiv at
vverbyany1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
James M. Gomez at
jagomez@bloomberg.net
Michael Winfrey, Balazs Penz