VIENNA, May 25. /TASS/. Monitors of the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) have confirmed that Russian representatives at the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination (JCCC) came under fire in Donbas on May 23.
"The Russian Federation Armed Forces Colonel-General said to the SMM that, on 23 May, his vehicle had come under AK47 fire. All passengers escaped unharmed but the vehicle suffered considerable damage and was abandoned on site," the SMM said in its daily update published on Monday.
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On Sunday, spokesman for th defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Eduard Basurin told a briefing that a group of JCCC monitors) led by Russian Colonel General Alexander Lentsov had been attacked by Ukrainian subversives on May 23. "At about 18:00 on May 23, a Ukrainian subversive group attacked Russian representative at the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination General Lantsov," he said. "During its inspection trip, the group of JCCC officers registered considerable number of Ukrainian heavy weapons where there shouldn’t be any under the Minsk agreements." That was the reason for the attack, Basurin said.
Luckily, he said, none of the car’s passengers and the driver, a Ukrainian servicemen, had been hurt.
On May 21 to 23 Col Gen Lentsov alongside some officers from the JCCC was in the township of Shyrokino in the Novoazovsk district of the Donetsk region where he ensured control over the ceasefire in one of the ‘hottest’ spot along the line of contact.