By the middle of the past week, the situation on the front in Donbas dramatically deteriorated.
While earlier in the week, Kiev daily opened fire on the territory of the DPR about 500 times, by the mid-week this number almost tripled. The particularly intense fire was was opened by the Ukrainian side in the south.
All the week, Kiev delivered to the front line, in addition to artillery and armored vehicles, ammunition as well as mercenaries, nationalists and special purpose units. Only in the Donetsk segment of the front arrived 50 trucks with ammunition, 30 mercenaries from a PMC and about 300 employees of the SBU to carry out cleansing of the local population.
As a result of the shelling, two children were wounded: a 11-year-old girl in the south of the DPR and a 2-year-old boy in the village on the outskirts of Gorlovka, in the north of the Republic. Currently, the boy is in hospital, suffering multiple fractures of a leg, but according to the doctors, his life is out of danger.
The shelling from the Ukrainian side also resulted in damage to over a dozen houses, and one of the localities on the outskirts of Donetsk, as a result of multi-day attacks during the «ceasefire», was completely destroyed.
In addition, in the mid-week Kiev made another attempt to break through the DPR army defense near Spartak village, in the north of Donetsk. According to the Defense Ministry of the Republic, three groups of the Ukrainian military, consisting of 10 people each, after the artillery barrage and supported by two tanks and mortars, went from different sides on a frontal attack on the DPR army positions.
The attack was repelled, with the Ukrainian side having lost 2 soldiers killed and 5 wounded. The DPR Defense Ministry noted that all three groups consisted of soldiers of the 25th separate airborne brigade, commemorative in Donbass for their particular cruelty against the civilian population in 2014.
In the LPR, earlier in the week, a Ukrainian subversive group also made another attempt to break thorough. The group moved to the positions of the LPR army on an infantry fighting vehicle which, however, stalled halfway to their goal, and had to be towed, along with the attackers, to their original positions. The LPR army soldiers did not even have to open return fire.
According to the annual report of the Ukrainian military authorities, 70% of the Ukrainian military equipment is in poor condition, and half of it is beyond repair. In addition, on the Svetlodarsk arc, the critically low supply of fuel is noted in the Ukrainian army units.
In the mid-week, Kiev also massively shelled front-line towns and villages of the LPR, in particular, Debaltsevo liberated by the DPR and LPR armies in winter 2015.
As a result of the shelling, a civilian was wounded and later, died in hospital from his injuries.
At the same time, the stated headquarters ATO that all the attacks had been carried out by the LPR, while the authorities of the Republic reported that the attacks had been targeted on vital infrastructure of the localities, which had resulted in over 7,000 civilians left without electricity and heat in the cold weather.
In the Donetsk segment of the front, objects of the civilian life-support also remain under constant bombardments from the Ukrainian side.
The DPR intelligence discovered a newly created Ukrainian dug within 200 meters from the Donetsk filtration plant, in spite of Kiev’s written guarantees, presented a year ago, of the absence of the Ukrainian army units within 1.5 km from the plant.
In addition, according to the plant workers, the Ukrainian military constantly threaten them with another bombardment, thus forcing them to interrupt their work and go down into a shelter. The disruptive of the Donetsk filtration plant work would lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, not only in Donetsk and the surrounding area, but also in three Ukraine-controlled localities.
In the mid-week, the Ukrainian military deliberately opened fire on a point of humanitarian aid delivery in one of the suburbs of Donetsk, when the local civilians gathered there to receive the aid.
Last week, the Ukrainian side also shelled again the locality of Krasnogorovka on the territory under their control west of Donetsk, causing the death of a civilian. Local residents reported that the shelling had come from the Ukrainian side, however, the arrived OSCE observers had documented the fact of the shelling, the direction from which it had been carried out, had not been indicated in their report, which gave Kiev an opportunity to declare that the village had been shelled by the DPR.
In the Kiev-controlled part of the Lugansk region, the Ukrainian military, according to local residents, are also finally taking off the mask of «liberators».
In one of the localities, drunken Ukrainian soldiers moving on an infantry fighting vehicle, crashed a civilian car and fled the accident scene.
In Stanitsa Luganskaya, located close to the capital of the LPR, radicals of the «Right Sector» robbed a grocery store.
In Schastye, also located north of Lugansk, three Ukrainian AWOL soldiers raped a female student who they met by chance on their way.
At the same time, the Ukrainian military are increasingly deserting their positions.
Early the past week, the official report of a representative of the ATO headquarters informed of three Ukrainian soldiers who had not returned to their units from a furlough.
The DPR intelligence reported that last week, 15 Ukrainian military had deserted in the Donetsk segment of the front. In the Lugansk segment of the front, the number of Ukrainian deserters amounted to over 30 men. They are being searched by rapid response squads, with the order of the General Staff of Ukraine to open fire at them in case they resist detention. According to the DPR intelligence, two deserters have already been eliminated.
After the failed attempt of frontal attack in the Donetsk area, the DPR army soldiers found three bodies of the Ukrainian military who had died hitting a landmine. Near their bodies, there were found two «Kenwood» radios of the foreign production. It is still unclear whether it was another Ukrainian subversive sent by the command on their own minefields, or the Ukrainian soldiers had decided to cross the front line and surrender to the DPR.
One of the dead was born in 1993, thus he was most likely a conscript soldier.
At the same time, last week Kiev announced a call about 4,000 reserve officers, those who had graduated from a university, studied at the military department and, subsequently, received a military rank, but had no army experience, as well as citizens born in 2000, those who have barely turned 17 years old.
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