Ukraine's representative in the Trilateral Contact Group on the Donbas settlement, former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma spoke of a failure to come to an agreement on withdrawal of forces from the line of contact between the conflicting parties due to absence of compromise with regard to the very demarcation line.

"It is easier for them [foreign ministers of Germany and France, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Jean-Marc Ayrault] to announce, while we need to have this issue solved. We cannot go giving up our interests. If we find a way out of the situation, we will write in in the documents that the September 19 line will be observed and this will be a step," Kuchma told Interfax-Ukraine in a comment in Kyiv on Friday.

Kuchma went on to recall that the demarcation line was agreed upon in Minsk on September 19, 2014. "All the forces need to be withdrawn to [the distance of] 1 km from this line and a broader safety area has to be established. But there is one problem: the representatives of the LPR/DPR (Luhansk People's Republic and Donetsk People's Republic] have seized 1,500 square km since then and they are proposing a withdrawal from the new line of contact," he said.

Kyiv categorically opposes the alteration of the demarcation line, Kuchma said. "We are strongly against it and thinking over how to find a solution to this question, because security depends on how this issue is solved," Kuchma explained.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said on September 14 that an agreement on separation of forces in three pilot areas in Donbas is to be inked next week.