MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. A group of observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Russian journalists have come under fire near the village of Shirokino in eastern Ukraine, the defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk republic reported Tuesday.
"When the OSCE joint monitoring mission was moving in the inhabited locality of Shirokino to control the regime of ceasefire, the convoy came under fire from the Ukrainian armed forces," the Donetsk news agency quoted an army spokesman as saying.
"A group of Russian journalists also came under fire," the agency said.
DPR head Alexander Zakharchenko said Tuesday that Russia’s representative in the OSCE Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the ceasefire regime in east Ukraine Col. Gen. Alexander Lentsov came under fire near Shirokino.
"He has come under fire for a second time. This shows once again that Ukraine opens fire intentionally. Each instance of firing is an attempt to make us shoot and then say the Minsk agreements were violated," Zakharchenko said.
Russian television channel REN TV said Tuesday its journalists, who also came under fire from the Ukrainian armed forces, barricaded themselves on the outskirts of Shirokino.
A REN TV correspondent, Dmitry Vakhnitsky, got in touch with the editorial office. He said the house where journalists hid is constantly under fire from the Ukrainian armed forces.
Vakhnitsky said by phone that a REN TV driver was wounded and taken out of the locality.
"We came here yesterday to film violations of the ceasefire. OSCE representatives arrived today. There was silence for two hours. We wanted to leave, but a bullet hit our car’s tire and the car crashed into a tree. The driver was taken away as wounded," he said.