Kiev said on Wednesday that Ukrainian troops were leaving the flashpoint eastern town of Debaltseve.

Kiev said on Wednesday that Ukrainian troops were leaving the flashpoint eastern town of Debaltseve.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced in a video statement that he has given an order to withdraw troops from Debaltsevo.

“We stated and proved that Debaltsevo was under our control and that there was no encirclement. Our units withdrew according to plan in an organized manner. They took military hardware with them – tanks, APCs, artillery pieces, tow-tracks, cars,” the president said.

He added that some 80 percent of the troops have already left the city.
Meanwhile, the pro-Russian separatists confirmed the move, saying that Kiev troops surrounded in Debalstevo “have started to surrender en masse.”

Maksim Leshchenko, a senior official in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told journalists on Wednesday that the Ukrainian troops are laying down their arms “in their hundreds.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Eduard Basurin, a military spokesperson for the rebels, confirmed taking some 300 soldiers prisoner.

Debaltsevo was Kiev’s stronghold deep inside the rebel-held territories in eastern Ukraine, a military asset portrayed in the media as a site of a heroic last stand of the Ukrainian military.

The fate of Debaltsevo was arguably the biggest debating point at last week’s peace talks in Minsk, which resulted in a ceasefire agreement. The continued violence around the city contrasts the virtually uninterrupted truce in other parts of eastern Ukraine.