On November 8, 2016, the United States held an election of the 45th President, which had been preceded by a very tough struggle between the two candidates who embody fundamentally different views on the future of the country.
Placing all their hopes on Hillary Clinton for arms supplies, financial assistance and increase of the pressure on Russia, the Ukrainian authorities decided, apparently, to present their candidate with the replacement of fireworks that she had canceled a few days before the election.
On the night before the election, Kiev dramatically increased the intensity of attacks on the Donbass Republics, the number of which exceeded a thousand that night. The fire was opened along the entire front line from artillery, heavy mortars, grenade launchers, tanks and infantry fighting vehicles.
As a result of the shelling, on the outskirts of Gorlovka, the largest city in the north of the DPR, were damaged 4 houses.
In the south of the Republic, in Dokuchaevsk, a woman born in 1940 was wounded in her own house. Another shell hit a store.
Sakhanka, a small village near Dokuchaevsk, was shelled by the Ukrainian military for 24 hours. As a result, 70 houses in the village were left without electricity.
In Elenovka, a village situated on the contact line, south of Donetsk, the Ukrainian side opened fire from 122mm artillery and 120mm mortars on a line of civilian vehicles waiting for their turn to pass through the checkpoint. The DPR soldiers immediately sent civilian cars in the direction of Donetsk and were forced to suspend the movement across the contact line.
In the spring of 2016, as a result of shelling a similar line of civilian transport, at this checkpoint were killed five civilians, including a pregnant woman. This time there were not casualties, but the shelling resulted in the complete or partial destruction of five houses in the village.
In the LPR, on November 8, the Ukrainian side opened fire from mortars, grenade launchers and infantry fighting vehicles on the village Zhyoltoye. The fire hit a kindergarten, with children playing there at the time of the attack. No one was hurt only because of the swift actions of the educators.
With Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election, the Ukrainian authorities lost hope for both an extension of the American curators’ full support and their restraint on nationalists.
At the end of the week, the most radical Ukrainian organizations announced a gathering of their supporters in Kiev on November 21, the «anniversary» of Maidan, in order ‘to complete the national revolution that began in 2014’ and to destroy the power that ‘has betrayed the national interests’.
In response, the Kiev authorities stepped up the delivery of the nationalistic battalions to the front line, in order to prevent them from mass demonstrations in the capital. Only in the last week, according to the DPR intelligence, at the Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk segment of the front of arrived a battalion and two companies of the «Right Sector» radicals.
At the same time, after the visit of the Chief of Staff, Muzhenko, at the positions on November 8, the Ukrainian army received, apparently, an order to intensify the hostilities, in order to demonstrate Kiev’s commitment to a forceful way of solving the conflict in the east of the country.
As a result, having dramatically increased on November 8, the intensity of the shelling of the DPR territory by the Ukrainian side was maintained at the level of, according to the Defense Ministry of the Republic, about 1,000 shots per day all over the week.
The most tense situation remains in the south of the DPR, with the main forces of Ukrainian nationalists and mercenaries amassed there. As a result of their attacks, four villages were completely de-energized. In one of them the destruction had reached such proportions that the authorities of the Republic were forced, in the light of the coming cold weather, to evacuate the local population to Donetsk and Novoazovsk.
During an inspection of the village by the OSCE mission representatives, the Ukrainian side opened artillery fire on them. The same group of observers came again under fire from the Ukrainian positions, when they went to a neighboring village to document effects of the shelling.
Only then, at the end of the week, the deputy head of the OSCE mission, Alexander Hug admitted the escalation of the conflict in Donbass.
In just a week, according to the DPR Defense Ministry, Kiev opened fire on the territory of the Republic over 5,000 times, with more than 3,000 rounds made from heavy weapons. The shelling hit 23 localities, in which 2 civilians were wounded and over 60 homes fully or partially destroyed.
In the LPR, the end of the week was most devastating. On the night from 11 to 12 November, a barrage from the Ukrainian positions hit Bryanka, a town located to the west of Lugansk.
According to the authorities of the Republic, over 100 152mm artillery shells were launched on the town. As a result of the shelling, a civilian born in 1937 was killed, another was wounded, and the number of destroyed houses is still being clarified.
In addition, a direct hit of a Ukrainian shell damaged a pipeline and a power substation where a fire broke out. As a result, 16 localities which are home to over 20,000 residents, were de-energized, as well as 3 mines. At the time of the shelling, 40 miners stayed underground and were rescued to the surface only in the morning.
The Ukrainian military, both the radical nationalists and regular troops, do not conduct a policy of terror only against the citizens of the Republic of Donbass, but also against the local population of the Kiev-controlled territories which they have supposedly liberated and are protecting.
On November 8, in the south of Donbass, drunken Ukrainian soldiers hijacked a tank and drove to a store, running over a civilian vehicle on their way. The three car passengers were killed on the spot.
To the west of Donetsk, according to local residents, the Ukrainian military shelled with mortars the outskirts of a town occupied by them, which was filmed by the Ukrainian media and presented an attack by the DPR. The shelling resulted in two civilians wounded and seven houses damaged.
In a village located in the south-west of Donetsk, in a quarrel with the locals, the Ukrainian military killed one of them with a knife and wounded another.
After the closure of the checkpoint in Elenovka due to the shelling on November 8, the Ukrainian military shot, in broad daylight, a 16-year-old boy who was trying to cross the contact line near the checkpoint.
On November 10, in Stanitsa Luganskaya, at the only checkpoint in the Lugansk segment of the front, the Ukrainian military, from 6 am and for over 2.5 hours, were shelling with a heavy machine gun and a grenade launcher, a group of civilians waiting on the LPR side for the opening of the Ukrainian checkpoint.
At the end of the week, the military authorities of the DPR noted the sharp increase in the intensity of fire from grenade launchers from the Ukrainian side. In particular, on November 13, Kiev opened fire over 1,000 times, with almost half of the rounds made from grenade launchers. It is not excluded that after the massive shelling, the Ukrainian army experiences the lack of ammunition for mortars and artillery.
This fact might be a reason for Kiev’s delivery of more heavy weapons to the front line in Donbass. In particular, at the end of the week, the intelligence of the Republics reported the arrival at the Ukrainian positions of 11 MLRS "Grad" in the Donetsk segment of the front, and a tactical missile complex «Tochka-U» in the Lugansk area.
According to the local residents’ information, yet unconfirmed, on November 13, the Ukrainian side shelled the western outskirts of Donetsk with «Grads».
In addition, local residents on the Kiev-controlled territory near the Lugansk front reported that during the week, they daily has observed flights of two Ukrainian aircrafts SU-25 along the front line.
The DNR intelligence also reported that on the northern, Gorlovka direction, Kiev has formed 4 battalion tactical groups.
The Kiev authorities are well aware that with the election of Donald Trump the US president, they have lost their, in fact, only patron, which threatens them with a direct attack of the Nazis. Therefore, it is possible that before his official inauguration, Kiev will try to throw the radicals in a blitzkrieg, so that they either seize Donetsk and Lugansk or be destroyed by the Republics.
At least, Kiev is already openly talking about the futility of both the Minsk and Norman format, and in Minsk the Kiev representatives refuse to discuss even the issues related to their military.
At the last meeting in Minsk, according the head of the DPR delegation, the Ukrainian side left unanswered the Republic’s offer to exchange at least sick and wounded prisoners.
Meanwhile, in the center of Kiev, near the Maidan, a monument to the Ukrainian prisoners is opened. A monument to still living prisoners.
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