OSCE wants 'real' withdrawal of arms in eastern Ukraine

The head of the European peacekeeping corps in eastern Ukraine has reiterated the importance of withdrawing heavy weapons from the front line of conflict.

"The intensity of hostilities is much, … too much. And what we want to see is really the withdrawal of the heavy weapons and we have very little evidence that this is taking place," said Lamberto Zannier, the Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which monitors the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

On February 11, 2015, at a summit in the city of Minsk, Belarus, a peace deal was brokered by Russia, Germany and France, in which Kiev and pro-Russia forces agreed on a package of measures to alleviate the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.

"[T]here was a line that was somehow defined in Minsk but that line doesn't really correspond to what is on the ground, because there have been movements. And there are some who say we should return to that line, but of course this becomes complicated," Zannier said in an interview on Friday.

Zannier called on both sides of the conflict to move back from positions established at the time of the Minsk accord in early 2015.

SS