The situation in Donbass has the tendency to de-escalation, OSCE

But the parties to the conflict still took heavy weapons from the line of collision.

Over the past week the situation in the East of Ukraine has stabilized somewhat and tends to de-escalate. This was stated by first Deputy head of the special monitoring mission of OSCE in Ukraine Alexander hug.

“The security situation over the past week has improved, there has been a decrease in the number of cases of violation of ceasefire by 20%. Cases of the use of tanks, mortars and artillery during the week we recorded 180 the previous week – 884. That is, the number of such cases has fallen by 80%,” said hug during a Skype conference.

He stressed that the SMM OSCE welcomes de-escalation of the situation, but that their “relative silence”.

“On Tuesday in the area of Svetlodarsk the 86 observers heard explosions of unknown origin, five shots from grenade launchers, five explosions of mortar shells with a caliber of 82 m. Wednesday in the controlled so-called DNR debaltseve recorded 298 blasts and cases of the introduction of machine guns. In the morning on this day in Kiev-controlled Svitlodarsk – 300. It is obvious that the situation will not change until there is a weapons and hand are close to each other”, – said the Deputy head of the mission.

Hug also noted that the parties to the conflict still took heavy weapons from the line of collision and actively use it.

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