MINSK: Kiev and pro-Russian separatists on Saturday signed a deal creating a demilitarised zone in conflict-torn eastern Ukraine after fresh talks aimed at ending a brutal five-month war.
Face-to-face talks began on Friday evening in the Belarussian capital of Minsk and ended seven hours later with an agreement to create the buffer zone and withdraw all foreign fighters and weapons from the area.
"We have signed a memorandum," said Ukraine's former president Leonid Kuchma, who was Kiev's representative at the meeting.
Under the deal, both sides agreed to pull back heavy weapons by 15 kilometres (nine miles) from their point of contact, thereby creating a buffer zone of "at least 30 kilometres wide", said Kuchma.
The OSCE would monitor the area, he said, adding that both sides also agreed to remove "all foreign armed groups, military equipment, fighters and mercenaries" from the zone.
Igor Plotinitsky, the leader of the self-declared breakaway Lugansk People's Republic, said the agreement should lead to the creation of "a zone of complete security".
The latest agreement builds on a European-brokered ceasefire sealed also in Minsk two weeks ago.
The elusive ultimate goal is to find a lasting solution to a conflict that has claimed around 3,000 lives and stoked Western alarm about Russia's territorial ambitions.
The talks also follow a peace overture by Kiev this week that included approving legislation offering self-rule for separatist-controlled areas in the east and an amnesty for fighters.
That move was hailed by Russia but greeted with a mixed response by the insurgents, and by nationalist leaders in Kiev who fear Ukraine is capitulating to Moscow.
Crucially, Plotinitsky said the question regarding the status of rebel-held Lugansk and Donetsk regions was not broached at the latest round of talks in Minsk.
The fragile truce sealed on September 5 has overall dramatically scaled back the fighting across industrial eastern Ukraine. But sometimes deadly shelling and gunfire is reported almost daily around the flashpoint city of Donetsk.
With the crisis at a potentially pivotal point, US President Barack Obama hosted Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko at the White House on Thursday, with both condemning Russian "aggression".
But the meeting underscored the limits of US support for Kiev in the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
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