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Ukrainian Deserters Kill Their Commanders - Kiev Encourages Attack Financially - DPR Warns About Resuming Hostilities

Voice of Donbass - 06.08.16 21:50

In July 2016 Alexander Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) of Ukraine, announced the possibility of imposition of martial law in the country on August 1st. It was not the first time that such a threat sounded and, like the previous ones, it remained unrealized. However, Kiev continued to increase the intensity of the attacks on the territory of the Republic, which had already grown dramatically at the end of the past week, after the completion of the Contact Group negotiations in Minsk.

At night from July 31 to August 1st, the Ukrainian military opened heavy fire on Yasinovataya, situated between Donetsk and Gorlovka, and the north-western outskirts of Donetsk. According to the DPR Defense Ministry, the fire on localities of the Republic was opened more than 800 times, with over 100 rounds from the 122 and 152mm artillery.

The local authorities reported that 14 houses had been damaged by artillery fire. In Yasinovataya one of the shells hit the yard of a house, with one civilian killed and another wounded in the explosion and subsequent fire. There were also wounded two DPR soldiers.

After the shelling, according to the DPR soldiers, cannons started to explode on the positions of the Ukrainian howitzer battery responsible for the attack.

According to the DPR Defense Ministry, all the days that followed, the intensity of attacks on the Ukrainian side ranged from 500 to 900 rounds per day, with a quarter of them made from heavy artillery. The all three directions were under attack: Gorlovka in the north of the Republic, Donetsk in the center and Dokuchaevsk in the south of the DPR.

As a result of the bombardments, four civilians were wounded, two of them in Donetsk.

The bombardments also caused the further destruction of residential areas and infrastructure. The local authorities reported that, from 1 to 4 August, 2016, 36 residential houses were damaged in the DPR frontline localities. There were also damaged power lines on the western outskirts of Donetsk and at the Donetsk filter plant, resulting about 900 homes left without electricity in one of the city districts, and the water supply stopped in another two districts, as well as in Yasinovataya and Kiev-controlled Avdeevka.

The DPR army, according to the command, lost, for the first four days of August, two soldiers killed.

In July 2016, the official losses of the DPR army amounted to 11 soldiers killed and 21 wounded; among civilians, the Republic lost one person killed and 25 wounded.

The official losses of the Ukrainian army in July, according to the press service of the ATO Staff, totaled 40 men killed and 182 wounded. At the same time, the Ukrainian public organization "Sisters of Mercy" reported that in July, only one hospital in Kharkov received over 300 wounded.

Kiev has already openly admitted that a significant part of Ukrainian losses are non-combat. According to the DPR intelligence, only in the last four days, the Ukrainian army lost two soldiers dead and three wounded in the front segment to the west of Donetsk, due to the detonation of a 120mm mortar shell, caused by violation of safety requirements. In addition, due to an error in the spotting of the fire, one of the Ukrainian Army units shelled another, with the latter having lost over 20 men killed and wounded.

In addition, the DPR intelligence sources on the ground reported that, due to the overcrowding of the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk segment of the front, there occurred an outbreak of dysentery. Only in the past three days, over 50 soldiers were sent to nearby hospitals. Apparently, the situation with the epidemic is worsening, because the AFU command have sent epidemiologists to the Donetsk segment of the front.

As a result, the number of deserters in the Ukrainian army has recently increased dramatically. The DPR intelligence reported that, in the first three days of August, 10 Ukrainian soldiers left their positions on the front line, taking their weapons with them. Another three, when officers tried to stop them, killed one of them and wounded another.

From the LPR also come reports about the deterioration of the situation on the contact line, which was hitherto considerably calmer than in the DPR. Soldiers of the Republican army attribute this fact to the replacement of the AFU units on the front line with nationalist battalions. As a result, there dramatically increased the number of attacks on the territory of the Republic, during which the Ukrainian side again began to use infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, anti-aircraft systems, as well as heavy artillery.

In particular, at night from 1 to 2 August, the LPR near front town of Stakhanov was shelled with 152mm artillery. According to witnesses, one of the shells hit the courtyard of a residential house, which resulted in three civilians wounded. The condition of one of them is still assessed by doctors as severe.

In addition, soldiers of the LPR army reported constant provocation from the Ukrainian military. In particular, the Ukrainian subversive groups enter the LPR territory and hang there flags of Ukraine and the "Right Sector". These actions may aim at luring the LPR soldiers out, in order to open sniper fire on them while they are removing the flags, or at creating scenery for the Kiev media reporting the next ‘liberated piece of Ukrainian land’.

Meanwhile, the LPR soldiers firmly declared that any attempts of the Ukrainian military to seize parts of the "grey" zone are decidedly repressed.

Soldiers of the Republican armies have repeatedly pointed out that, during the shelling, the target of the Ukrainian side is much more likely to be residential areas of Donbass than their position. The same policy of terror is applied by Kiev to both areas controlled by its army and entry and exit checkpoints on the contact line.

Local residents report that at checkpoints, which are closed at nightfall, the Ukrainian military force them to spend the night in the buffer zone, not letting them pass to Ukraine and, at the same time, forbidding them to come back for the night to the territory of the Republics. At night, the Ukrainian side starts shelling the LDPR, hiding behind civilians as a living shield. Last week, a woman received shrapnel wounds at one of these checkpoints in the Gorlovka area.

Residents of one of the front-line villages in the Lugansk region inform that they try not to go out after 3 pm, especially after the AFU military were replaced with volunteer battalions. Nationalists, usually drunk, stop people in the streets, ask them provocative questions and can beat a person looking at them ‘without due respect’.

Two days ago, the OSCE monitoring mission stated that their employees, going for an inspection in one of the AFU units, had been stopped by drunken Ukrainian military. Threatening the international observers with weapons, the Ukrainians forbade them to travel further and forced them to go back.

Massive attacks by the Ukrainian army on the DPR localities at the end of July 2016 caused such extensive destruction that the OSCE mission demanded in its report an investigation and punishment for those responsible. The investigation revealed that the AFU commanders on the front line are entitled to personally make the decision to open fire according to the situation. At the same time, in those days when the Ukrainian military come under return fire, Kiev pays them combat bonus to salary.

At the same time, at the negotiations in Minsk, the sides failed to agree on the issue of weapons withdrawal from the contact line for the distance defined in the Minsk Agreements, as the Ukrainian side claimed not to have sufficient authority.

Moreover, Kiev still continues to deliver to the front line weapons and equipment. According to the DPR intelligence, in just the past three days, the Ukrainian units in the Donetsk and Gorlovka directions received up to 20 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, 6 152mm motorized artillery systems "Akatsia", 5 122mm howitzers D-30, 15 tanks and about 20 120mm mortars.

Two days ago, the Ukrainian military authorities reported that NATO countries had provided Ukraine with EUR 1 million worth demining equipment as logistical support under the program "Science for Peace and Security».

After the fruitless negotiations in Minsk, Denis Pushilin, the DPR representative in the Contact Group, made an official statement, which says that if at least the first three points of the Minsk Agreements, namely, complete cease-fire, the withdrawal of weapons and the OSCE supervision of it, are not implemented, the hostilities will resume in Donbass through the fault of Kiev.

The same day, the head of the press service of the General Staff of Armed Forces of Ukraine announced that the General Staff already has an ‘adequate response plan’ to react to ‘an attack aiming at expanding the territory’, the preparation of which in the Republics the head of the Defense Ministry intelligence of Ukraine had announced earlier.