KIEV, September 2. /TASS/. Ukraine’s army command is preparing an offensive on positions of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) with the use of three army brigades and the Azov paramilitary battalion under control of foreign instructors, Daniil Bezsonov, a spokesman for the DPR operations command, said on Sunday.
According to the DPR’s reconnaissance data, after assault drills, Ukraine’s 79th assault airborne brigade is about to be pulled from the Nikolayev region to the conflict zone in Donbass. The Azov group, formally a unit of Ukraine’s National Guard, is engaged in exercises to drill the skills of combat actions in populated localities.
"So, it seems that the command of Ukraine’s ‘unified forces operation’ allocates the central role in an offensive to the 36th marines brigade, 56th mechanized infantry and 79th assault airborne brigades. Nazis from the Azov group will be tasked to back the offensive in the rear. All these operations will be commanded by the military from the United States and Canada, or, in other words, by NATO military," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.
According to Bezsonov, a big number of Ukrainian servicemen have reportedly reached the village of Urzuf on the Sea of Azov’s coast, while high-ranking US and Canadian military arrived to the command of Ukraine’s Vostok army group. "We don’t rule out that foreign servicemen will take part in the planned offensive," he said.
On September 1, the DPR operations command said citing reconnaissance data that Ukrainian army had begun preparations for an offensive to be launched on September 14.