Events

MINSK, 14 February (BelTA) – The working groups of the trilateral contact group on Ukraine have gathered in Minsk for talks, BelTA learned from the Twitter account of the Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The talks will be followed by a meeting of the trilateral contact group.

At the previous meeting on 31 January, the OSCE’s special representative in the trilateral contact group Martin Sajdik pointed to a slight increase in the number of ceasefire violations. The Working Group on Security once again stressed the need to publish and comply with orders, including the need for disciplinary measures for violating the ceasefire. The Working Group members also discussed the withdrawal of forces and hardware, removal of heavy weapons and mine clearance.

During the previous round of talks in Minsk on 31 January, the Working Group on Humanitarian Issues welcomed the exchange of detainees achieved in late December. The Economic Working Group discussed the outage of the mobile operator "Vodafone-Ukraine" in the territory of certain areas of Donetsk region. Moreover, the participants of the Economic Working Group discussed payment for water deliveries in the Karbonyt and Voda Donbassa supply systems, repayment of arrears to former employees of Ukrainian Railways in certain areas of Donetsk and Lugansk regions, and also environmental safety issues related to the flooding of coalmines in the conflict zone.