The disengagement of forces and hardware has been held successfully near the villages of Bohdanivka and Petrivske close to the contact line in Donetsk region, according to Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman for Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) issues Andriy Lysenko, a UNIAN correspondent reported.
”At 11:00 local time on Friday, the forces and hardware of Ukrainian and enemy troops were successfully disengaged in the area of Bohdanivka and Petrivske in the Mariupol direction,” he said.
According to Lysenko, the ATO forces withdrew one kilometer to the west and took new, earlier prepared positions.
Lysenko also noted that the withdrawal process was verified by the Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) and the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (OSCE SMM) to Ukraine.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Russian-backed militants returned their troops to previously held positions in the area of Petrivske.
The Tripartite Contact Group on September 21 signed a framework agreement on disengagement of forces and hardware along the contact line.
The document stipulates that the condition for the start of the disengagement in the areas of Stanytsia Luhanska, Zolote, and Petrivske shall be a truce for seven days in a row.
The agreement says that the withdrawal shall be carried out by moving the forces and hardware back from their positions on both sides in order to create disengagement areas, usually not less than two kilometers wide and two kilometers deep. At this, the very process of disengagement shall be monitored by the OSCE SMM.
