NATO Chief Warns Ukraine Truce Not Being Upheld
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Ukrainian forces and pro-Kremlin militias were due Sunday to pull back under a new peace plan, but NATO's top military commander warned that there was a ceasefire "in name only" on the ground.
The warring sides are required to move back fighters and weaponry and create a buffer zone along the frontline that splits the separatist east of Ukraine from the rest of the ex-Soviet state.
The withdrawal and an accompanying monitoring mission by teams from the OSCE pan-European security body are at the heart of a nine-point plan struck early Saturday in the Belarussian capital Minsk.
The deal is meant to reinforce a truce forged on September 5 in a bid to stem five months of conflict that has claimed nearly 3,000 lives and threatened Ukraine's very survival.
AFP reporters said the situation on the ground appeared calm early Sunday, but it was not immediately known if there had been any movement of government troops or rebels.
NATO top commander, General Philip Breedlove, said Saturday that continued clashes had shown the two-week-old agreement to be a ceasefire "in name only" and accused Russia of keeping soldiers on Ukrainian soil to bolster the insurgents.
The truce was "still there in name, but what is happening on the ground is quite a different story," he said on the sidelines of a NATO meeting symbolically convened in the ex-Soviet satellite state of Lithuania.
But he struck a more optimistic note when he spoke of Saturday's Minsk agreement. "It is our sincere hope and desire that... the two combatants can come to agreement to again get to a ceasefire situation," he said.
The Minsk memorandum - signed by the warring parties and endorsed by both Moscow's Kiev ambassador and an OSCE envoy - also requires the withdrawal of all "foreign armed groups" and mercenaries from the conflict zone.
Russia denies having any forces in Ukraine. It says a number of its troops captured by Kiev's forces must have accidently strayed across the border.
