Weapons withdrawal countdown to begin anew if Donbas truce violated – Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff

11:34, 01.10.2015 1 min read

A 48-hour ceasefire countdown was launched in the operation zone in the south-east of Ukraine on Thursday, after which the withdrawal of weapons under 100mm caliber should begin, Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff spokesman Vladyslav Selezniov has said.

"This countdown began at 00:00 a.m. [on Thursday]," he told reporters on Kyiv.

Selezniov also said that as soon as militia forces of the self-proclaimed republics breach the truce, the countdown will begin anew.

"A new countdown will be launched if a new incident of shelling is registered," he added.

It was reported earlier that on September 29 in the Belarusian capital Minsk the trilateral Contact Group for Ukraine signed an agreement to withdraw weapons under 100mm caliber from the contact line in Donbas. The leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, signed this document on September 30.