At the negotiations in Minsk, held in September 2016, there was signed an agreement on the separation of forces and means of the sides to the conflict, in three pilot segments of the front on 1 October. The condition for further negotiations on the peaceful settlement of the conflict was the compliance with the «complete silence» regime in these segments for 7 days.
After signing the agreement, the LPR representative in the Contact Group at the negotiations in Minsk said that an attempt by either side to seize the completely demilitarized zone would be regarded as a clear violation of the Minsk Agreements and would lead to a tough response.
Having violated all the previous agreements in Minsk, this time Ukraine decided to not even pretend to observe them. On October 1st, the mutual withdrawal of troops from the front line was held at only one of the three sites, in the LPR. At the other two - one in the DPR, the other also in the LPR - the Ukrainian side refused to withdraw its troops, saying that they had not received the corresponding order.
The authorities of the Republics were compelled to also leave their troops on their original positions, despite the fact that the checkpoints on them had been promptly dismantled by 1 October.
At the same time, the day before, the DPR intelligence discovered, in the same segment of the Donetsk front where it had been planned to withdraw the forces and means of the sides, the arrival at the Ukrainian positions of two tanks, two infantry fighting vehicles and seven trucks loaded with ammunition.
The same day, on the segment of the Lugansk front where the withdrawal of troops subsequently took place after all, Ukrainian snipers attacked the LPR sappers trying to de-mine a road in order to ensure the safety of the OSCE observers who were to monitor the process of the withdrawal. The OSCE Mission officially announced that the Ukrainian side hindered its work.
In addition, in the Lugansk segment of the front, the LPR army soldiers on positions reported that two days before the scheduled withdrawal of troops, the Ukrainian military had equipped a new bunker in the «grey» zone, 50 m away from the position of the army of the Republic.
Thus, it is not difficult to suggest that Kiev did not even intend to comply with the new agreement, just as it had not, for a single day, respected the «complete silence» regime, announced by the Republics unilaterally on September 15 and supported by Ukraine at the insistence of European diplomats.
On the night of October 1st, on the eve of the planned withdrawal of troops, the Ukrainian military shelled the territory of the DPR about 200 times, and about half of the rounds were made from heavy artillery.
The next night, after the failure of the separation of the sides, the number of attacks on the Ukrainian side increased to nearly 300, and Kiev did not use in the shelling only heavy mortars and artillery, but also tanks. As a result of the bombardments, two soldiers of the DPR army were killed and another was wounded.
The destruction of homes and civilian infrastructure in anticipation of the upcoming cold weather puts civilians of Donbass on the brink of survival. In the most shelled outskirts of Donetsk and Gorlovka, the DPR authorities deployed field kitchens to provide residents of these localities, at least, with hot food.
In total, over the past week, which was supposed to be the second week of «complete silence» in Donbass, Kiev opened fire on the territory of the Republic 863 times, with half of the rounds made from heavy weapons prohibited by the Minsk Agreements.
Moreover, having declared another ceasefire on September 1, 2016, supported the initiative of the Republics of the «complete silence» regime on September 15, and signed the agreement on the withdrawal of troops from the front line on October 1st, Kiev continued to deliver weapons and equipment to the contact line in Donbass.
According to the DPR intelligence, over the past week, at the Ukrainian positions arrived six batteries of 122 and 152mm artillery, two tank companies, two batteries of 120mm mortars and about 100 Polish mercenaries in Mariupol, the largest city in the south of Donbass.
The OSCE mission noted in its weekly report the withdrawal from the sites of the Ukrainian equipment of 29 122mm motorized artillery systems, 92 122 and 152mm howitzers, 57 100mm anti-tank cannons, 78 tanks, 4 anti-aircraft missile systems and 1 anti-tank guided missile system.
Yesterday, the day after the Ukrainian side had disrupted the withdrawal of the troops, at the Ukrainian position in the Donetsk segment of the front arrived another 10 tanks, 23 infantry fighting vehicles and 70 foreign mercenaries.
In the Lugansk segment of the front, Kiev delivers even more deadly weapons. According to the LPR intelligence, over the past week, at the Ukrainian position, arrived a battery of 300mm MLRS "Smerch" and 14 MLRS «Grad", in addition to tanks, anti-tank cannons, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers. Moreover, the LPR intelligence found a Ukrainian electronic intelligence station directly on the contact line.
Soldiers of the LPR army also note a large number of mercenaries on the Ukrainian side of the Lugansk segment of the front. There have already been found flags of Turkish, Georgian, Crimean Tatar radicals, and in some places, where the positions of the sides are separated by a few hundred meters, soldiers of the Republic can already hear from the Ukrainian side only foreign speech. not Russian or Ukrainian.
Moreover, according to the LPR intelligence, last week west, to the west of Lugansk arrived a Ukrainian unit «Crimea», consisting mainly of women.
However, in general, the situation in the LPR is still more relaxed than in the DPR, although it also tends to aggravate. Over the past week, Kiev made 17 attacks on the territory of the Republic, using not only mortars, but infantry fighting vehicles, anti-tank grenade launchers and anti-tank guided missile systems as well.
Kiev also continues the massive delivery of ammunition to the ATO area. According to the DPR intelligence, last week on the Ukraine-controlled territory in the Donetsk segment of the front, there were delivered 300 tons of explosives, allegedly, phosphorus shells.
The ammunition is stored in warehouses situated mostly within civil localities. In two of them, the locals came out to protest, demanding the withdrawal of life-threatening military depots outside their localities. In response, Kiev sent the security service (SBU) employees to these localities to suppress the protests.
In addition, according to local residents, the Ukrainian special services obliged local businesses on the Kiev-controlled territory to provide them with lists of employees for their further mobilization to so-called self-defense units. It looks like Kiev does not dare to announce the next, seventh wave of mobilization after the failure of the previous two, and is trying to increase the size of its army in such a way.
Moreover, the President Poroshenko vetoed the law on the procedure for termination of the contract with the Ukrainian army in the ATO zone ‘until the end of the special period’.
Thus, Kiev has no intention to stop the hostilities in Donbass. Neither does it intend to comply with the political conditions stipulated by the Minsk Agreements. According to the last week’s social survey of MPs of the Verkhovnaya Rada, only 15.6% of respondents would vote for giving Donbass a special status, while 63.6% would vote against it.
The Head of the DPR, Alexander Zakharchenko commented the results of this survey, saying that they had shown that Kiev was not ready for a political settlement of the conflict in Donbass. Therefore, in the framework of preparation for the elections to the local self-government, already postponed three times by the Republic's leadership in a hope to find a compromise with Kiev, on October 2, the DPR and LPR held the primaries.
On the two outskirts of Donetsk, the local authorities had to equip polling stations with bomb shelters, in case of highly probable shelling by the Ukrainian side.
23 media and 147 journalists applied to the DPR Provisional Election Commission for accreditation to cover the primaries. The Commission also registered 1,065 observers for the primaries, including 22 international ones from Finland, Greece, Germany, Italy, South Ossetia, France, Czech Republic, Serbia and Abkhazia.
Once the preliminary voting finished, the DPR Provisional Election Commission reported that 370,000 citizens of the Republic had taken part in it. The foreign observers noted the full compliance of the primaries in the Republics with the international democratic standards.
The Ukrainian media announced the primaries in Donbass a ‘game of democracy’.
Update:
After the failure of the separation process on October 1, 2016, in Minsk there was agreed a new date for the withdrawal of the troops, October 3. Kiev once again refused to withdraw its troops.
Moreover, when the DPR army units had retreated to the prepared positions in the rear, the Ukrainian side opened fire on the territory of the Republic from the positions which its troops were to have already left by that time.
At the same time, the Ukrainian media reported that the DPR army had opened fire on the international observers. The OSCE and STSKK did not confirm this information.
Kiev hastened to clarify that the fire had been opened on the Ukraine-controlled territory from the supposedly abandoned DPR position. The OSCE and JCCC observers monitoring the separation process on those positions did not confirm this information either.
On the orders of the military authorities of the Republic, the DPR army units have returned to the previously abandoned positions.
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