After Kiev’s unsuccessful attempt to break through the defense of the army of the Republic in the Debaltsevo area, to which the DPR gave a harsh response, the intensity of the shelling by the Ukrainian military has declined slightly. According to the DPR Defense Ministry, the Ukrainian side opened fire on the territory of the Republic, mainly, from mortars, infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers and small arms, with single rounds from artillery.
Despite the failure of the attack, Kiev tried to squeeze everything possible out of it. The men in the DPR positions reported that the next day the Ukrainian side brought to this segment of the front journalists, including the European ones, and at night the Ukrainian military went on the attack again.
Apparently, they counted on the Republic to react harshly once again and enable the journalists to show the world a barrage hitting the Ukrainian army positions and, consequently, supporting the words of a Ukrainian politician, ‘Ukraine is an outpost of Europe, standing guard in front of Russian hordes’. The soldiers of the Republics, however, again did not succumb to the provocation, just repelling two staged attacks.
In addition to the provocation in the Debaltsevo area, Kiev attacked the territory of the DPR in already traditional three directions: Gorlovka, in the north of the Republic, Dokuchaevsk and Kominternovo in the south, and near Donetsk in the central part of the front line.
In Gorlovka, fire was opened again on its northern suburbs. Locals reported a series of Ukrainian landing projectiles and mortar shells, and tried to stay close to shelters.
In Donetsk, the infantry battles were fought in the northern and western suburbs, but in the central part of the city the weekend was relatively quiet.
In the south, the Ukrainian side again shelled the residential areas of Dokuchaevsk. According to local residents, the bombardment was mostly carried out with mortars, with occasional rounds from heavy artillery of no less than 152mm caliber. The attack resulted in a local resident wounded.
On the whole, over the weekend, according to the DPR authorities, as a result of bombardments by Kiev, two civilians were wounded and nine houses seriously damaged, with one of them completely destroyed.
Over the past week, the DPR Defense Ministry reported nearly four thousand attacks on the Ukrainian side, including about three thousand of them with heavy weapons. As a result of the bombardments, two soldiers of the DPR Army were killed, as well as three civilians, including two children, and another 10 civilians were wounded. In addition, the attacks resulted in two houses completely destroyed and another 61 households severely damaged.
The press service of the Ukrainian operational command (ATO) reported dozens of attacks on their positions on the part of the DPR in the Donetsk and Mariupol directions, noting that, in some segments of the front, the army of the Republic had used 122mm motorized artillery systems and howitzers. The reports of the ATO press service included no information on casualties in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
At the same time, according to the DPR intelligence, over the past week Kiev lost about 20 men killed and wounded only by their own mines, due to lack of maps of minefields in the Ukrainian units. The total weekly casualties in the Ukrainian army in the ATO area accounted for more than 80 men.
The striving of the Ukrainian command to hide real losses in the army leads to a constant discovery of unidentified corpses on the Kiev-controlled territories. Earlier, locals already informed of finding bodies dressed in the Ukrainian military uniform in abandoned houses. Yesterday, the DPR intelligence sources on the ground also reported two tilt KAMAZ trucks located in a green zone near Donetsk and containing about 15 unidentified bodies.
In addition, on the same day, soldiers of the LPR army gave the Ukrainian side the body of a soldier left behind on the battlefield during the attempted breakout in the Debaltsevo area. The day before, Ukrainian volunteers reported in social networks on another three Ukrainian soldiers killed in the "grey" area, whose bodies Ukrainian officers had refused to recover. It is possible that these soldiers were reported missing.
Yesterday, the military authorities of the DPR once again urged the Ukrainian military not to take part in crimes of the Kiev authorities and to come over to the side of the Republics.
Locals also continue to disappear in the Kiev-controlled territories. A few days ago, it was suggested that the Ukrainian army seizes, in particular, parts of the "grey" area in order to take localities not yet plundered. According to local residents, the Ukrainian military immediately occupied most comfortable houses in them, with their owners taken in an unknown direction.
The losses of the Ukrainian Army may also include the results of the SBU regular checks carried out to identify the Ukrainian military assisting the army of the Republics. The DPR intelligence reported that, only over the weekend, in one of the Ukrainian units located in the Donetsk area, several soldiers were arrested without any explanation.
The DPR intelligence also reported new columns of heavy weapons and equipment delivered by Kiev to the front line and consisting of heavy mortars, tanks, motorized artillery systems, howitzers, anti-tank cannons and MLRS "Grad" and "Uragan". It was noted that in recently in the Donetsk and Mariupol directions come a lot of tanks whose numbers can not be found in lists of the OSCE to monitor the arms withdrawn by Kiev, which suggests that Ukraine brings to the front new pieces of equipment.
Yesterday, President Poroshenko announced that Ukraine had received from the US counter-battery radars which would soon be sent to Donbass.
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