The negotiations in Minsk came to an end, and the tension on the fronts in Donbass increased dramatically again. At the weekend, the number of attacks by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, according to the DPR Defense Ministry, again came close to a thousand per day. Kiev also returned to the active use of artillery and tanks along the entire front line.

In total, as reported by the authorities of the Republic, over the past week the number of Ukrainian attacks exceeded 3,000, with most of them made with heavy artillery.

According to the DPR Ombudsman, in the week 12 people were killed in the Republic, including a civilian, who was carrying out repair works on the territory of the Donetsk airport. 18 people received injuries, 4 of them civilians.

One of the civilians received severe shrapnel wounds when an artillery shell hit his house. There was also shrapnel wounded a woman who was traveling in a minibus from the DPR territory to the Kiev-controlled area. Eyewitnesses reported that the minibus came under fire from the Ukrainian side, when it was in the no man’s land, between the Ukrainian checkpoints and that of the DPR.

The DPR authorities argue that Kiev is carrying out particularly intense bombardments in the Donetsk and Gorlovka direction, deliberately destroying civilian homes and infrastructure.

In particular, the mayor of Gorlovka reported that the northern outskirts of the city, located 200 meters from the contact line, are experiencing ongoing problems with water and electricity, due to incessant attacks from the Ukrainian side. Last week, only for one night the shelling from the Ukrainian positions led to six disruptions in the water supply. When repair crews come to the spot, Ukrainian snipers open fire on them.

During another bombardment of Donetsk at the end of the week, there were damaged power lines, which resulted in about 200 miners trapped underground. The power supply of the mine was restored only the next day, after which the miners were brought to the surface.

In just a week, according to the DPR authorities, as a result of attacks on the Ukrainian side, there were damaged 44 houses, 26 of which were completely or partially destroyed.

In the south of the Republic, the situation on the front was not so hard, but, nevertheless, residents of villages near Dokuchaevsk had to spend the night before the weekend in cellars. Residents of the city spent that night in readiness to go down to shelters. According to them, the children went to bed in hallways, which are the safest place in urban apartments.

Soldiers of the LPR army also reported that the Ukrainian military do not open fire at their positions, but at localities situated behind them, in order to provoke the army of the Republic to open return fire.

The DPR military authorities also suggested that the sharp increase in the intensity of fire on the Ukrainian side could allow Kiev to hide a huge number of non-combat losses in the Ukrainian army.

According to the DPR intelligence, last week, in one of the AFU units, during the shelling with a 152mm MSTA-B cannon, occurred an ammunition detonation. In social networks volunteers wrote that the Ukrainian military had tried to charge into the cannon two shells at once. As a result of the detonation, 11 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 18 wounded, with one cannon destroyed and another three damaged.

In addition, as reported by the DPR intelligence, in another Ukrainian unit a soldier killed his commander-nationalist, as a result of a conflict that stemmed from the soldier’s refusal to open fire on peaceful localities of Donbass. The DPR intelligence sources on the ground reported that the command is preparing to withdraw the unit, completely demoralized and refusing to fight, from the front line.

The Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine said live on the "112" TV channel that the number of non-combat losses in the Ukrainian army had already exceeded a thousand of soldiers.

There also came out new information about the cover-up by the Ukrainian side of their dead. The director of a mine, one part of which is located in the DPR and the other on the Kiev-controlled territory, said that the enterprise continues to operate in spite of the incessant shelling. The miners reported that underground they can clearly smell the putrid stink wafting from the far end of the horizons. It looks like that the Ukrainian side is simply dumps the bodies of their dead soldiers in the pits.

At the same time, Kiev still continues to deliver to the contact line military equipment and personnel. Over the past week, the DPR intelligence reported on the arrival of dozens of Ukrainian heavy mortars, tanks, motorized artillery systems, infantry fighting vehicles, 122 and 152mm artillery cannons, as well as MLRS "Grad" and trucks with ammunition in the Donetsk and Gorlovka segments of the front.

In the Lugansk segment of the front, soldiers of the LPR army fighters reported the arrival to the contact line of about a company of nationalists wearing the Ukrainian uniforms with "Right Sector» stripes on them.

The OSCE Mission observers noted in their weekly report the lack in the Ukrainian weapons storage sites of about 100 pieces of equipment, including 24 MLRS "Grad", over 50 122 and 152mm motorized artillery systems and over 10 artillery and anti-tank cannons.

The DPR intelligence sources on the ground also reported another batch of US weapons delivered to Ukraine. On the basis of a technical agreement between the Defense Ministry of Ukraine and the command of the US Armed Forces in Europe, in the framework of the program "Partnership for Peace", a charter flight accompanied by five American soldiers delivered to Lvov, a city in western Ukraine, about 1,000 5.56mm rifles, about 400 sniper rifles, over 500 machine guns and over 150 grenade launchers.

In addition, the DPR military authorities note the sharply increased activity of Kiev’s intelligence by UAVs. Over the past week, 11 Ukrainian drones were detected in the Donetsk and Gorlovka directions.

The OSCE Mission also presented a footage by their drone, confirming the ceasefire violations by both sides in the conflict. Curiously enough, the close-up recording was carried out by the OSCE drone mostly on the DPR territory.

Last week, the former deputy chairman of the Donetsk military and civil administration, governing the Kiev-controlled territory of the Donetsk region, said in an interview with the Ukrainian magazine "Krajina" that only 2% of the population supports the Ukrainian authorities. As for the rest, according to him, they ‘closed up: they work at enterprises, have almost no contact with Ukraine, watch Russian TV and socialize only among themselves’.

In response to the passive resistance of inhabitants of Donbass, the SBU intensifies the policy of terror. Residents of Stanitsa Luganskaya, a Ukraine-controlled town near the front line in the Lugansk region, report that the entire town is plastered with leaflets threatening with prosecution for "separatism", which includes, in particular, empathy for the LDPR. Under the pretext of checking the information on the buying of votes at the recent local elections, residents of the town are massively summoned to the SBU, after which some of them disappear.

Meanwhile, nationalist units of the Ukrainian army already shell the territory of the Republics right in front of a camera. Polish journalists filmed the documentary "Fascists in trenches" on the positions of the "Azov" regiment in the south of Donbass, where one of the "Azov" radicals tells them that now the Ukrainians are fighting in the east of Ukraine for their nation. Just as they did under the leadership of Bandera in the 40s in the Volyn region where they massacred about 100,000 Poles.

The crew of the Ukrainian "1 + 1" channel visited the Ukrainian positions in the Gorlovka area, in the north of Donbass. In their report, the Ukrainian military say openly that "separatists" do not shell them, while they attack the DPR units daily, moving closer to Gorlovka with each passing day.

There is not a word about the Minsk Agreements in this report.

Two days ago, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced the launch of a hotline through which Ukrainians would be able to report information to investigators about people who had taken part in the organization of the referendums held in the DPR and LPR, and their financing.

The law on the amnesty for all those involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, required by the Minsk Agreements, does not exist even in a draft form.