Heavy-weapon withdrawal proceeds slowly in Ukraine

Ukraine's president announced Monday that government and Moscow-backed rebel forces have pulled back most of their heavy weapons in the east, but just a day later monitors said both sides were stalling on other terms of a cease-fire deal.

Slow progress has been made in the arms-withdrawal process, a key measure agreed to at high-level talks last month that installed a cease-fire with the goal of ending Ukraine’s separatist crisis. Over 300 monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, are overseeing the removal, but monitors have complained that neither is fully cooperating.

The accord reached on Feb. 12 in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, mandates that heavy weapons be pulled back by distances between 15 to 45 miles from the front line, depending on the weapons’ caliber.

Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said in an interview with a state broadcaster Monday evening that exchanges of artillery and rocket fire have largely stopped along the 300-mile front but that skirmishes with small arms and grenade launchers persist. He also acknowledged that some heavy weaponry remains in place near a combat flashpoint at the airport of the rebel-held city of Donetsk.

Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the OSCE mission in Ukraine, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that both sides have obstructed monitoring efforts to some degree. He said that the OSCE has observed the withdrawal of most weapons and that the organization have been able to track most convoys as they fall back. But he said they are often prevented from accessing where the weapons end up.

“We have insisted upon free and unfettered access throughout the conflict zone, but almost every day there are incidents where we’re being denied access or delayed,” Bociurkiw said.

Both sides have blamed the other for these obstructions. Eduard Basurin, a representative for rebel armed formations, on Tuesday accused Ukrainian forces of running behind schedule in removing some armaments from the front lines.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin countered by accusing rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of reducing the weapons pullback to a "sham."

"[They] constantly bar the OSCE monitoring mission access to the withdrawal process," Klimkin said after attending a meeting of top security officials.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's military operations in the east, said that government forces retained the option of returning the weapons to their original positions if hostilities resume. He also said troops still on the front line are equipped with heavy infantry weapons needed to repel any rebel advances.

"In order not to put out servicemen at risk on the front line, there is some artillery positioned not far away," he said. "In case of necessity, they will be brought back."

After the Russian-backed rebels took over the strategic city of Debaltseve, cease-fire violations have begun to peter out. The OSCE said the only remaining hotspots of unrest are around the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, particularly the city’s airport, as well as in the town of Shyrokyne, east of the strategic port city of Mariupol. Both sides report violations each day.

Monitors say they are hopeful that as the heavy-weapon withdrawal proceeds, more trust-building steps called for by the Minsk agreement can be carried out — including prisoner swaps and, eventually, the removal of armed personnel.

Given the difficulty of access for their mission, the OSCE is looking into deploying drones or satellites to better monitor the landscape from above.

In the meantime, Bociurkiw said, the OSCE is overseeing the safe delivery of humanitarian aid to villages in rebel-held territory. The violence, which the U.N. estimates has killed more than 6,000 and displaced almost 1.8 million people, has left many parts of eastern Ukraine desperate for help.

Bociurkiw said that as monitors finally gain access to the worst-affected areas, including near Donetsk airport, they are discovering residents who have hidden out in bunkers, many who said they’d been without running water or electricity for up to seven months.

“Yesterday our monitors outside Donetsk were approached by 30 people hoping to go back to access their private property for the first time since last summer,” Bociurkiw said. “They were shocked to see destruction to their neighborhoods.”

 Michael Pizzi contributed to this report, with wire services