According to the DPR Defense Ministry, for the last week Kiev opened fire on the territory of the Republic over 6,000 times, and almost half of the rounds were made from artillery, heavy mortars and tanks.
The situation on the Donetsk front sharply escalated by mid-week, with a twofold increase in the number of attacks per day, which is the end of the week increased by another one and a half times and reached over 1,500 bombardments by the Ukrainian side on the positions of the DPR army and localities of the Republic.
During those days, the OSCE observers reported 500 recorded explosions of shells in the area of Donetsk, and another 170 in the south, in the area of Mariupol.
As reported by the authorities of the Republic, 22 localities came under the Ukrainian fire, which killed 4 and injured 2 civilians, including a man born in 1950.
As a result of the shelling, there were damaged 19 houses, mainly on the outskirts of Donetsk, and on the south of the Republic.
One of the houses on the western outskirts of Donetsk, as a result of shelling with incendiary ammunition, burned to the ground. Its owners, a family with two children, having enough time to run out, were not injured, but left to spend the winter without shelter.
In another house, a 80-year old woman was sleeping when the shelling started. She was not hurt either, but having gotten out of the house, wandered around it in a state of shock the whole night, because she could not find the entrance.
As a result of the bombardments, the DPR army lost one soldier killed and another wounded.
In addition, earlier in the week, under the cover of mortar fire, Kiev made another attempt to break through the DPR army defense line in the south of the Republic. The attack was repelled, the losses of the Ukrainian side amounted to 5 soldiers killed and 7 wounded. During the attack, 3 soldiers of the DPR army were injured.
The next day, according to the military authorities of the DPR, at the site of the clash were found modernized small arms used by the special purpose units in Romania. According to the intelligence of the Republic, the operation had been prepared and carried out by a specially prepared group of mercenaries under the cover of nationalist of the «Azov».
Two days later, another Ukrainian subversive group got lost in the fog and entered the DPR army positions. As a result of a following clash, the subversive group lost 2 men killed and 3 wounded and retreated to the Ukrainian positions.
After another sharp increase in the intensity of fire from the Ukrainian side, the DPR army launched a «retaliation» and destroyed, by the high-precision counter-battery fire, positions of the Ukrainian artillery, from which massive bombardments of Donetsk and the surrounding area were carried out.
Kiev also continues to systematically destroy the infrastructure of the Republics.
In the Gorlovka area, according to the local authorities, as a result of shelling from the Ukrainian side, a pipeline was damaged, which left without water dozens of small towns and villages, including those located on the Kiev-controlled territory.
In the area of Zolotoye, a town in the LPR, where had taken place the withdrawal of forces and means of the sides earlier month, the Ukrainian military opened fire on electricians who came to repair power lines damaged during the shelling.
Kiev also announced its intention to terminate the water supply to the LPR, allegedly because of non-payment for delivered water, which might end up in over half a million residents facing a humanitarian catastrophe.
Kiev also strengthens the police regime on the contact line, at checkpoints where civilians can cross it.
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian side, under the pretext of attacks on the part of the DPR, closed the crossing checkpoint in Maryinka, near Donetsk.
At other checkpoints, despite the increased number of civilians crossing the contact line, the Ukrainian military deliberately, according to local residents, slow down their work in the evening, which resulted early this week in about 200 civilian vehicles left to spend the night the «gray» zone.
At one of the checkpoints, two women died due to prolonged interrogation by the SBU and the lack of heating points.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi visited this checkpoint at the end of the week and was shocked by 2-kilometer-long queues, due to which civilians are forced to spend the night in the cold. As a result of his visit, he addressed to the Ukrainian authorities with recommendations for improving the procedures of crossing the contact line.
The prospect of Kiev following these recommendations looks very dim, since the Ukrainian side has already announced their intention to close the only point of crossing in the LPR, allegedly for repairs. Civilians are proposed to use the railway bridge for crossing the contact line, even though there is no access to it for road transport.
At the same time, Kiev has announced, unilaterally, without the consent of the LPR, the opening of a new crossing point near Zolotoye, despite the fact that this area has not yet been fully cleared of mines after the withdrawal of troops and weapons of the sides at the beginning of the month.
The terror regime is also intensified in Kiev-controlled localities near the contact line.
In two localities in the Lugansk region, the curfew is tightened, the Ukrainian military are conducting random checks of homes for weapons, ammunition and explosives. Local residents report that after these checks, their valuables are gone.
In another village, the Ukrainian military broke the nose of a 70-year-old resident with a butt blow because she greeted them, ‘Heil Hitler’.
The Defense Ministry of Ukraine has ceased to pay bills for electricity consumed by the Ukrainian military units in the ATO area. As a result, companies supplying electricity massively are cutting off military facilities of power, and the Ukrainian military are seizing the homes of local residents. The locals in the both Donetsk and Lugansk regions complain about numerous instances of eviction on the pretext of ‘time of need’.
Only in the Donetsk region, according to DPR authorities, 40 civilians suffered from the tyranny of the Ukrainian military in the past week, which inevitably results in the expansion of the resistance of the local population.
In a village located to the north of Donetsk, the Ukrainian military set fire to a house, killing two local residents. The villagers addressed to the DPR with a request to take them under the protection and shield them from the tyranny of the Ukrainian military.
At the end of the week, the authorities of the DPR announced the creation of a local cell of the public organization «Donetsk Republic» in Slavyansk seized by Ukraine in 2014.
In one of localities of the Lugansk region, the unknown destroyed the headquarters of the nationalist organization «Right Sector», which followed the local branch of the nationalists imposing a ‘state of emergency for the activists of the organization’.
To suppress the dissent, Kiev has accelerated the delivery of nationalists and mercenaries to the contact line, especially in the Lugansk section of the front.
Last week, the LPR intelligence reported the arrival at the frontline of five nationalist battalions units, which are accommodated in schools and children's holiday camps, and 200 Polish mercenaries dressed in the NATO uniform and accompanied by three motorized artillery systems «Akatsia».
Kiev also continues to deliver weapons and equipment to the frontline, withdrawn largely from the storage sites of arms prohibited by the Minsk Agreements. Last week, at the storage sites of the Ukrainian weapons, the OSCE observers documented the absence of 10 MLRS «Grad» and «Uragan», over 70 artillery pieces, 50 tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, as well as 5 anti-aircraft missile systems. At the same time, the DPR intelligence found 6 MLRS «Uragan» in the Donetsk area.
According to the DPR intelligence data, the missile systems on the Ukrainian positions were demonstrated to the OSCE observers by some commanders of the Ukrainian units, after which those commanders suffered a disciplinary punishment, and the ATO command ordered a ban on the OSCE access to weapons on the Ukrainian positions.
At the end of the week, the LPR intelligence reported that in the area of Zolotoye, the Ukrainian side had again taken their position left during the separation of forces and means of the sides at the beginning of the month, and had even seized the OSCE observation post.
The same day, the Ukrainian side foiled another, the seventh, attempt to withdraw the troops in the area of Stanitsa Luganskaya.
In addition, last week Kiev actually disrupted the next meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk, pointedly refusing to accept documents on the bombardments, prepared by the LPR delegation. and simply not appearing at a number of meetings.
At the same time, the founder and former leader of the «Right Sector», Dmitry Yarosh announced negotiations with President Poroshenko in Kiev on creating a parallel, «volunteer» army.
Earlier this week, at a meeting of the Prime Ministers of Ukraine and Croatia, the Croatian side proposed Ukraine their assistance in the reintegration of uncontrolled territories, using their experience which in 1995 had led to the death of thousands and displacement of over 200,000 civilians of Serbian Krajina.
The next day, the Ukrainian Minister of Culture said on the air of the Ukrainian television that the population of the east and south of the country is not sufficiently genetically pure.
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