KIEV, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine sent a letter to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) with the request to start the troop pullback in the area of Petrivske on Nov. 7, the head of the Joint Forces Operation said on Monday.
"We have already submitted a letter to the OSCE that we are beginning on (Nov.) 7. We will start the actual troop pullback on (Nov.)8 unless there is a violation of the ceasefire regime," Volodymyr Kravchenko said in a press conference in the city of Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier announced that an agreement has been reached at the Trilateral Contact Group meeting in Minsk on Oct. 1 on the troop pullback near Petrivske in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk Region and Zolote in the eastern Luhansk Region.
The troop pullback in Zolote started on Oct. 29.
The lack of progress on the troop pullback process is one of the main obstacles in arranging a summit between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany, known as the Normandy Four, where the next steps of the conflict resolution in the East of Ukraine should be decided.
