Ukrainian defense officials and leaders of the separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine announced Thursday that they were moving tanks and other heavy weaponry away from the front lines in a belated effort to abide by the conditions of a European-brokered peace agreement.
But both sides warned that the movement would be reversed if their opponents sought to take advantage of the lull in shooting that has finally occurred more than a week after the cease-fire was to have taken effect.
Under the peace plan hammered out Feb. 12 during marathon negotiations in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, the combatants were supposed to have begun the weapons pullback on Feb. 16, the day after the cease-fire went into force, and to have completed the moves within two weeks.
The Russian-backed separatists unleashed fierce artillery barrages for days after the purported cease-fire start and succeeded in taking the strategic railway junction town of Debaltseve before halting offensives.
Ukrainian defense officials and political leaders had said they could not meet the Minsk schedule for weapons withdrawal because of the continued attacks on government positions.
Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, told reporters in Kiev on Thursday that fighting had finally died down enough to begin complying with the weapons pullback, which by the peace plan's timetable should be completed by Sunday.
The Interfax-Ukraine news agency quoted Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoly Stelmakh as saying the government forces were moving their 100-millimeter anti-tank guns 16 miles back from the front line, as stipulated by the deal brokered in Minsk by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.
"Pursuant to the Minsk agreements, the ATO [anti-terrorist operation] forces have begun to withdraw the artillery systems from the entire line of contact," Defense Ministry spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk told the Ukrinform news agency in Kiev, adding that the weapons would be concentrated in areas monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
A Defense Ministry statement, however, warned that the government reserved the right to scrap the pullback if rebel attacks on their positions resume.
Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the separatists' self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples Republic, also announced that a weapons withdrawal was underway.
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Ukraine, separatists say they are pulling back heavy weapons