KIEV, Nov. 8 (Xinhua) -- The delayed troop pullback in Petrivske villages in eastern Ukraine will start Saturday, said chief monitor of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Ukraine, on Friday.
Yasar Halit Cevik confirmed the decision during his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Vladimir Kravchenko, Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation (JFO) commander, said on Friday that the Ukrainian side was ready to start the process at midday the same day.
Later, the JFO headquarters said there was no notice from the OSCE about it being ready so that the pullback was postponed to Saturday.
Earlier, Zelensky announced that an agreement on the troop pullback near Petrivske villages and the city of Zolote, Luhansk Region had been reached at the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) meeting in Minsk on Oct. 1. The troop pullback in Zolote started on Oct. 29.
The lack of progress on the troop pullback process is one of the main obstacles to 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.
