On Thursday, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that on November 4, Ukrainian security forces and militias should begin the troop withdrawal in the area of Petrovskoye in the Donbass.
“If everything is safe in Petrovskoye for a week, you know that silence should be set for seven days, then on November 4 we should start troop withdrawal in Petrovskoye”, – Zelensky said at the joint briefing with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Kiev. The broadcast was conducted by the President’s Office on Facebook.
At the same time, he noted that the condition for the meeting of the leaders of the member countries of the “Normandy format” (Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany) was the approval of the Steinmeier formula, as well as troop withdrawal in the areas of Zolotoye and Petrovskoye in the Donbass.
“I don’t see any doubt that we will have a meeting if all parties are eager and want to meet within the Normandy Format, because the main result is agreements to put the war to its end”, – Zelensky said.
Earlier, the contact group for Ukraine agreed to resume the process of troop withdrawal in the areas of Petrovskoye and Zolotoye, they were supposed to start on October 9. However, Ukrainian nationalists in Zolotoye opposed this. In Kiev, they said that the armed people in Zolotoye were not representatives of the armed forces of Ukraine and did not have the right to be with weapons in the military operation zone. On Tuesday, militias and the Ukrainian security forces began the process of withdrawing of forces from the contact line in the area of the city of Zolotoye. The whole process takes three days.