Ukraine, rebels withdraw weapons

President Petro Poroshenko says both sides in the east Ukraine conflict have withdrawn the majority of their heavy weapons.

Both sides in the conflict in eastern Ukraine have withdrawn most of their heavy weapons from the frontline, says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

In an interview with state television on Monday evening Poroshenko said government forces had "withdrawn the lion's share of multiple launch rocket systems and heavy artillery".

"We see the Russian-backed militants have also withdrawn a significant part," he added.

Poroshenko confirmed the ceasefire deal hammered out by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in the Belarussian capital Minsk on February 12 was largely holding, despite sporadic deadly clashes.

Artillery fire had halted among most of the 485-kilometre frontline, after Kiev "managed to stop the aggressors", he said.

But the army was still sustaining losses in some flashpoints, with 64 soldiers killed since the peace deal came into effect on February 15, bringing to 1549 the number killed since the war started, he said.

However, Kiev's forces sustained around a third of the fatalities when separatists forced them out of the transport hub of Debaltseve three days into the truce.

Since then the fighting has considerably abated, with both sides making a show of towing away rocket launchers and other big guns used in the 11 months of fighting that has killed more than 6000 people.

The separatists rarely announce their own casualty figures.

Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of providing separatists with troops, training and weaponry. Moscow denies this but despite the lull has remained under strong diplomatic pressure from European capitals and Washington.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond on Tuesday accused President Vladimir Putin of undermining other former Soviet republics, besides Ukraine.

"We are now faced with a Russian leader bent not on joining the international rules-based system which keeps the peace between nations, but on subverting it," Hammond told the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London.

"President Putin's actions - illegally annexing Crimea and now using Russian troops to destabilise eastern Ukraine - fundamentally undermine the security of sovereign nations in Eastern Europe," he said as NATO forces prepared for a major exercise in the Baltic states.

US military officials said deployment of about 3000 troops had begun for the three-month Operation Atlantic Resolve. The exercise will see NATO forces working alongside their allies in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The United States also said Monday it had delivered more than 100 pieces of heavy military equipment to the Baltic states.


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Source: AAP



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