D. whereas the agreement on a ceasefire in eastern U
kraine reached on 5 September 2014 in Minsk by the trilateral Contact Group and followed by the memorandum of 19 September on the implementation of the 12-point peace plan has been constantly violated, mainly by pro-Russia militias, turning the crisis into a lower-intensity conflict that risks to slowly sliding into the status of a frozen conflict; whereas since 9 December
2014, thanks to the initiative of President Poroshenko calling for a ‘silence reg
ime’, the number of violations has been ...[+++]dramatically reduced; whereas the main points of the memorandum have not been implemented, with regard in particular to the demarcation of the line of contact, the withdrawal of heavy weapons over 15 km on both sides, and the control of the Ukrainian-Russian border by the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission (SMM); whereas the recent new round of talks between the parties that took place in Minsk on 24 December 2014 failed to achieve concrete results except for the further exchange of hostages;