Ukraine ceasefire: No signs of weapons withdrawal, official says – CNN

On Tuesday, the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said the ceasefire wasn't having the effect that his organization was hoping.

"It's not really quiet on the line of contact and that there are no signs of the withdrawal of the weapons," OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said at the United Nations headquarters, where he had previously addressed the UN Security Council.

"The crisis in and around the Ukraine continues to be a major source of tension and instability in Europe," he said. Zannier had been invited by the Ukraine delegation of the security council to speak before the chamber.

He told the security council that the OSCE was "monitoring the ceasefire and are ready to observe the much-needed withdrawal of heavy weapons."

Zannier later told reporters at the United Nations that there continued to be a number of violations and that the impact on civilians in the disputed regions were becoming "increasingly significant."

"We will need to keep pushing and activate the international community also to put pressure on the sides to implement" steps to ensure the ceasefire holds.

His appearance at the UN came just before the organization's chief monitor told CNN that there were about 200 ceasefire violations overnight Tuesday local time. The number is added to hundreds more observed since the ceasefire nominally began Monday morning.

Alexander Hug, Principle Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine told CNN's Clare Sebastian that around 100 of those were explosions, indicating that heavy weaponry like tanks and mortars are still in place.

Unlike the last few weeks, where critical infrastructure was cut off, there is no immediate crisis as of now, but any of these explosions could knock out a power line and make things worse, Hug added.

Zannier said relations between the West and Russia remain "strongly adversarial" and that "in Europe we increasingly see the impact of an approach to the post-Cold war phase (of cooperation) with a Cold War mentality."

He said there was a "very real risk of escalation" in fighting in the region and that Russian President Vladimir Putin's executive order to recognize travel documents from the de facto, pro-Russian separatist authorities in disputed areas of eastern Ukraine "complicates the implementation of the Minsk agreement."

Putin effectively withdrew from the Minsk agreement last week by signing an executive order recognizing travel documents issued by separatist authorities in the region.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia is recognizing the travel documents "for humanitarian reasons."

The Minsk agreement, which was negotiated in 2014 but never fully implemented, calls for the "bilateral cessation of the use of all weapons," and the decentralization of power in the region "with respect to the temporary status of local self-government in certain areas of the Donetsk and the Lugansk regions."

At the time, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk spoke with guarded optimism.

"We had just two options: bad, and worse," he said. "So we decided at this particular period of time to get the bad option. Probably this option will save the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, and I hope this option will save lives of Ukrainian civilians, of innocent people, who are under a constant shelling of Russian-led terrorists."

"It's better to have this new deal rather than not to have (it)," he said. "But we do not trust any words or any papers. We are to trust only actions and deeds."

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Ukraine ceasefire: No signs of weapons withdrawal, official says - CNN

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