A group of Russian military servicemen are present in Ukraine to work on a map that would serve as the basis for separating the conflicting parties in the southeastern part of the country, Russia's permanent representative at the OSCE Andrei Kelin said.

A group of Russian military servicemen are present in Ukraine to work on a map that would serve as the basis for separating the conflicting parties in the southeastern part of the country, Russia's permanent representative at the OSCE Andrei Kelin said.

Russian officers, a large group of our military servicemen, are also taking part in this. About 80 people have arrived in Ukraine at an invitation from the General Staff of the Ukrainian armed forces and are working on this map in coordination with OSCE monitors," Kelin said on the Rossiya-24 news television channel.

As soon as the situation stabilizes, the heavy weapons and military hardware possessed by the opponents should be pulled apart by 15-30 kilometers along a line that is being drawn up on the map now, he said.

For the time being, "there are several areas on about 70 percent of the security zone, or a buffer zone, which stretches for 320 kilometers from the eastern section of the Russian border to Novoazovsk, where combat actions are continuing," Kelin said.

These areas include the Donetsk airport, the community of Shchastya, where a heating and power station supplying power to Luhansk is located, the Debaltseve railroad junction, and the outskirts of Mariupol, he said.

"The situation on the rest of the territory is pretty quiet," he said.

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