Russia does its best to convene Contact Group meeting early this week - ministry

Moscow calls for the soonest end of the hostilities and the restoration of truce in southeastern Ukraine.

"The Russian side is insisting on the strict fulfillment of the Minsk agreements regarding crisis resolution in Ukraine. This is the primary task of our contacts with the Ukrainian administration, the leaders of the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR and representatives of interested foreign countries, in particular, in the so-called "Normandy format"," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the Ukraine crisis on Sunday.

"Seeking to coordinate practical ways of making progress in the fulfillment of the Minsk agreement, DPR and LPR representatives came to Minsk to attend a new meeting of the Contact Group scheduled for January 16, 2015. However, Ukrainian representatives did not arrive in the Belarusian capital city and the meeting was disrupted. We are doing everything in our power to convene a meeting of the Contact Group at the very beginning of next week," said the statement published on the ministry website.

The ministry is profoundly concerned about the ongoing enlargement of Ukraine's military presence in the southeast in violation of the Minsk agreements. "This is proven, for example, by stepped up militarization, declarations of "new waves" of mobilization of the population of Ukraine and Kyiv's appeals for "avenging" the situation on the ground that had taken shape before the conclusion of the Minsk agreements in September 2014," the ministry continued.

Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a message to his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko on January 15 declaring the need for strict fulfillment of the ceasefire regime by the sides and the pullback of heavy artillery from the line of contact, the statement said.

"Although one of its [line of contact] sectors is being debated, Russia has called for the immediate pullback of heavy armaments from the line of contact according to the line coordinates demanded by the Ukrainian side. Besides, the Russian side will be ready to use its influence on the militia to persuade them to accept that scenario as a goodwill gesture and thereby avoid new civilian casualties," the statement said.

Proposals and an enclosed hourly schedule of heavy weapons' withdrawal were presented to the Ukrainian side at the Russian-Ukrainian control and coordination center, it said. "There is still no response to Putin's message and the Ukrainian army has turned down the proposals and resumed artillery bombardments of Donetsk, which creates a direct threat to the lives of civilians and OSCE mission observers," the ministry stated.

As to the Donetsk airport situation, the ministry said the airport must be transferred under the separatists' control consistent with the Minsk agreements.

"The issue has not been resolved for a long time because of disputes regarding some other sections of the line of contact and the Ukrainian army kept bombing the Donetsk airport and populated areas killing civilians, among them women and children, and devastating schools, residential buildings and other civilian infrastructures. DPR forces took the airport under control for stopping those criminal actions but the Ukrainian army launched a wide-ranging combat operation disregarding civilian casualties for gaining back that strategic site and carrying on bombardments of Donetsk residential areas," the ministry said.