Ukraine announces another troop pullback from contact line

KIEV - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that Ukraine will pull its troops back from the contact line near the village of Petrivske on Nov 4.

Zelensky made the remarks at a press conference after meeting with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Kiev.

The conflict-hit Petrivske is located in east Ukraine's Donetsk Region.

"If everything is safe in Petrivske for one week, there should be seven days of ceasefire. Then it seems to me that on Nov 4 we should start the troop pullback," he said.

It was reported on Tuesday that Ukrainian forces began pulling back in Zolote, east Ukraine's Luhansk Region. Stoltenberg expressed welcome to the progress in such areas.

On Oct 1, Zelensky announced that an agreement on the troop pullback from near Petrivske and Zolote had been reached at a Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) meeting in Minsk.

The lack of progress on the troop pullback process was one of the main obstacles in arranging the 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.