DONETSK, October 31. /TASS/. Railroad tracks have been blown up more than 1,000 times during hostilities in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), DPR Transport Minister Semyon Kuzmenko said Friday.
“More than 70% of railroad tracks have been restored; the rest have not been restored for security reasons,” Kuzmenko told journalists.
“During the war, at least 30 railroad workers have been killed and 307 have been wounded,” he said.
Kuzmenko said trains linking Donetsk with Kiev and Moscow will be launched in early November.
Fierce clashes between troops loyal to Kiev and local militias in southeast Ukraine's Donetsk and Lugansk regions during Kiev’s military operation, conducted since mid-April, to regain control over the breakaway territories, which call themselves the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s republics, have killed over 3,700 people, brought massive destruction and forced hundreds of thousands to flee Ukraine’s southeast.
The parties to the Ukrainian conflict agreed on a ceasefire at talks mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on September 5 in Belarusian capital Minsk. The ceasefire took effect the same day but has reportedly occasionally been violated.