At the night from 6 to 7 August, near the border between the Crimea and Ukraine, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia detained a group of Ukrainian saboteurs. The next night two more Ukrainian raiding parties tried to break into the territory of Crimea. A part of the saboteurs managed to return to Ukraine, with their departure covered by armored vehicles located on the Ukrainian territory and shelling the Russian border guards. During clashes, two FSB employees were killed.
According to the official information, in the caches, near which the saboteurs were discovered, the Russian border guards found improvised explosive devices with a total capacity of about 500 kg of TNT, and anti-personnel and magnetic mines, as well as grenades and special weapons used by special units of the AFU.
As soon as the fact of the clashes in the border territory of the Crimea became known, the Defense Ministry of Ukraine made a statement that the Russian military had been killed in the exercises and the Russian Federation was using their death for groundless accusations of Ukraine and destabilization of the situation in the region.
Later, however, the Russian side officially announced that several saboteurs had been arrested, including the head of one of the groups, who had previously served in the ATO zone.
The Ukrainian media immediately issued a version that the Russian secret services had kidnapped the Ukrainian soldier in order to present him as a participant in the staged terrorist attack attempt.
Meanwhile, the detainee began to testify, telling the FSB not only the names of the saboteurs and the organizers of their activities, but also the names of the objects on which it had been planned to carry out terrorist attacks.
The military authorities of Ukraine immediately distanced itself from the detainee, saying that he had acted out of patriotic motives and in his sole discretion.
On August 10, the Russian President Vladimir Putin said that, according to the investigation, the terrorist attacks had been prepared by officials of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which indicated that Ukraine had turned to the open terrorism at the state level.
The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Turchynov immediately accused Russia of preparation to disrupt the Minsk Agreements. Just as Kiev always does in respect of Donbass.
Apparently, having failed to provoke a counterattack by the Republics in response to relentless attacks on civilians, the Ukrainian authorities decided on a direct provocation against the Russian Crimea, hoping for a decisive rebuff which might have been finally presented to the world as the notorious «Russian aggression».
At the same time, the shelling of Donbass did not cease by any means. According to the DPR Defense Ministry, in the beginning of the week the Ukrainian side opened fire from 500 to 700 times a day, with from 100 to 200 shells launched from the heavy artillery.
According to the DPR Head, the people of Donbass have long been convinced that Ukraine conducts the terror policy, since the Ukrainian military does not aim at the position of the army but at the civilians and vital infrastructure in the region.
Over the past four days, only one soldier of the DPR army was seriously wounded, while among civilians two persons were killed and another three wounded, including a 16-year-old girl and an elderly man born in 1961.
The most devastating were the attacks on Donetsk, Gorlovka, the largest city in the north of the DPR, and Yasinovataya located between them.
Over the past four days, 10 houses were completely destroyed in Donetsk, and seven in Yasinovataya. As a result of the shelling, there were also damaged power lines and gas pipelines, because of which two of the Donetsk districts were left without gas, and another without both gas and electricity. In addition, in one of these districts, the power lines were repaired the next day after the first shelling, and the next night they were damaged again.
In the north of the Republic, a bombardment resulted in the de-energizing of a pump station which serves as a backup source of water supply for many localities in the Gorlovka area.
In the LPR, attacks by the Ukrainian side are still less intense than in the DPR. According to the military authorities of the Republic, over the past four days, Kiev opened fire about 100 times a day, but one of the towns, Stakhanov, became the target of the Ukrainian military for three consecutive days.
In the end of the past week, the town was hit with 152mm artillery; this week, the Ukrainian side shelled it with 120mm mortars, which resulted, according to local authorities, in another house destroyed, and a repair-mechanical plant and cemetery damaged.
By the middle of the week, the number of attacks on the territory of both DPR and LPR by the Ukrainian military decreased slightly. The authorities of both Republics attribute it to the arrival in Donbass of Alexander Hug, the deputy head of the OSCE monitoring mission. At the same time, due to the summer holidays, the mission observers are documenting results of the bombardments much less frequently.
When Alexander Hug came to inspect in Pervomaysk controlled by the LPR, he was proposed to pass to the Ukrainian side across the contact line on foot, as the Ukrainian army, constantly capturing parts of the "grey" area, had brought their positions essentially closer to the positions of the Republican army. Upon learning that the road was mined by the Ukrainian military, Alexander Hug categorically refused the offer. However, it is by this road that civilians wishing to cross the contact line are made to travel by the Ukrainian military at checkpoints.
In addition, in the area of entry and exit checkpoints, the Ukrainian military activated sniper fire. According to eyewitnesses, a few days ago, sniper fire was opened at two checkpoints in the Donetsk segment of the front, with civilians waiting there to cross the contact line. Kiev, apparently, intends to sow panic among the civilian population and reduce its movement across the contact line.
Residents of the near front areas controlled by Kiev, also report that recently, the Ukrainian military have been massively spreading information about an impeding offensive by the DPR army, due to which local residents are evicted from their homes and evacuated to the rear. The purpose of these actions is rather accommodation of newly arrived personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in deserted houses.
Kiev also continues to deliver to the front line new units of the Ukrainian military and nationalist battalions well as weapons and equipment. Only in the past four days, the DPR intelligence reported on arrival at the contact line, in all three directions of the front, of about 20 tanks, 8 infantry fighting vehicles, 30 122 and 152mm howitzers, 10 82 and 120mm mortars, 6 MLRS "Grad" and 4 "Ural" trucks with the personnel.
According to the LPR intelligence, to their segment of the front, Kiev also delivered about 15 armored vehicles.
The high concentration of the Ukrainian troops on the contact line leads to an ever increasing number of non-combat losses. Two days ago, according to the DPR intelligence sources on the ground, as a result of another error in spotting the fire, one Ukrainian unit shelled another, with over 10 soldiers wounded.
Cases of the Ukrainian military shelling their own positions have become so frequent recently that the medical staff of hospitals located in the ATO zone was given, according to them, instructions not to disclose the number of the wounded they received. In addition, from doctors of one of these hospitals came flash information about an outbreak of gastric-intestinal infection. According to unconfirmed data, it might be cholera.
Soldiers of the army of the Republics also noted active engineering works on the positions of the Ukrainian army. The observations of these works show that the Ukrainian military are rather building defenses.
After the statement by the Russian President Vladimir Putin that the Ukrainian government had moved to a policy of state terrorism, the President of Ukraine Poroshenko ordered to alert the troops on the border with the Republics of Crimea and Donbass to full combat readiness.
The Ukrainian Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament immediately announced that the possibility of war with Russia had exceeded 50%, and calculated that Russia's losses in it would amount to 50-60 thousand killed, while the Ukrainian losses would not exceed 15 thousand, because ‘the Ukrainian army is powerful, hardened and much more motivated’.
At the same time, the ATO volunteers state in social networks that the Ukrainian military warehouses are empty, with the stocks of uniforms and dressing not exceeding a third of the needs of the army, and the defense budget of Ukraine is mastered by 18%.
Yesterday, the head of the DPR Alexander Zakharchenko, commenting on the full alert of the Ukrainian troops in Donbass, said that Kiev might resume hostilities in Donbass in order to divert attention from the failed sabotage in the Crimea. At the same time, he promised Poroshenko ‘such resistance that the latter will stop running only at home’, in Kiev.
On the same day, in the evening, it became known that at the end of an emergency meeting with the country's security and diplomatic agencies, the President of Ukraine Petr Poroshenko instructed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to organize a telephone conversation with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
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