KYIV. June 27 (Interfax) - The Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), with participation of the breakaway districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, has confirmed commitment to a ceasefire in Donbas beginning July 1 in view of the summer harvest campaign, Darka Olifer, a spokeswoman for Ukraine's representative in the TCG and ex-president Leonid Kuchma, said.
"In view of the beginning of the harvest the TCG and the breakaway districts' representatives confirm: the parties to the conflict are fully committed to a comprehensive, steady, indefinite ceasefire beginning July 1, 2018; confirm their general and firm commitment to the full implementation of the Minsk agreements," Olifer wrote on Facebook after a TCG meeting in Minsk on Wednesday.
For this truce to really start working the package of security issues stipulated in the Minsk agreements must be addressed, she said.
These include: "ensuring a full, permanent and comprehensive cessation of the use of weapons under the monitoring and verification by the OSCE SMM [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Special Monitoring Mission]; security guarantees, to be provided primarily by Russia; getting Donbas militias to return to the dividing line set by the September 19, 2014 memorandum; monitoring and verification of the districts to be freed from heavy weaponry and military equipment, which are located within the boundaries of the towns of Kalmiusske, Novoazovsk, Sakhanka, Kumachove; making sure the militias remove heavy weapons, tanks, artillery, mortars in accordance with the Minsk agreements," Olifer said.
Furthermore, there should be constant SMM monitoring of areas along the part of the border with Russia no longer controlled by Ukraine, and buffer zones must be created in areas close to the border, she said