A regular meeting of the working group on security issues was held via videoconferencing on Tuesday, August 18.
According to the press service of the DPR Representative Office to the JCCC and the negotiation process, the representatives of the Republics focused on the armed forces of Ukraine’s violations of the additional measures for the enhancement and control of the ceasefire regime. Since July 27, 2020, when the additional measures entered into force, the number of attacks by the armed forces of Ukraine has significantly decreased, but the violations have not ended completely.
“Between July 27 and August 17, the armed forces of Ukraine attacked the Republic territory 16 times. Heavy weapons prohibited by the Minsk Agreements were not used. The most important achievement of the additional measures is that there have not been any casualties among civilians and military personnel of the DPR People’s Militia. Also, no destruction or damage to the infrastructure and housing facilities have occurred,” official representative of the DPR to the talks Aleksey Nikonorov stated.
As for the work of the coordination mechanism, the parties have come to the consensus about understanding its working rules. In its turn, the OSCE SMM welcomed the fact that the parties directly share information about violations and have established the interaction between the JCCC parties in their current composition, and promised to continue to assist the parties within the powers.
As part of the discussion on demining operations, the main stumbling block was the disagreement of the Ukrainian side to update the relevant decision of the Contact Group and to include in the new annex to it the remaining five locations proposed by the LPR that were not agreed.
The DPR representative committed to submit a consolidated version of the project of the updated decision of the Contact Group concerning the demining operations for agreeing and subsequent signing by the Contact Group members as was the case with the additional measures for the enhancement and control on 22 July 2020. On the same day, the project was sent to Coordinator of the working grouo Yaşar Çevik.
