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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Donetsk railway reports $23 million damage during conflict in Ukraine

The shelling and explosions from the positions of Kiev’s military have damaged the railroad, railway stations, locomotives, grids, bridges and other parts of the infrastructure

© Mikhail Sokolov/TASS

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Kiev attacks Donbas railways 39 times since February — DPR Transportation Ministry

MOSCOW, July 29. /TASS/. Damage of the Donetsk Railway over the time of the armed conflict in Donbas is over 500 million hryvnias (about $23 million), the transport ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said on Wednesday.

The shelling and explosions from the positions of Kiev’s military have damaged the railroad, railway stations, locomotives, grids, bridges and other parts of the infrastructure. The railway has spent over 31 million hryvnias (about $1.4 million) on restoration of the infrastructures.

The ministry said earlier that between June 1, 2014 to July 20, 2015 the Ukrainian military made 177 acts of sabotage: 109 shelling, 68 explosions. One worker was killed, and 16 got injured.

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On April 7, 2014, the then Ukraine’s acting president Oleksandr Turchinov announced plans to launch an "anti-terrorist operation" in the country’s eastern regions that disagreed with the Kiev authorities’ policy. By summer 2014, clashes between Ukrainian army and local militias grew into large-scale combat operations involving heavy weapons and warplanes. According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), about 6,500 people have been killed in combat operations in eastern Ukraine. More than two million people are refuges, where 1.3 million are internally displaced persons.

The Minsk accords were signed on February 12, 2015 after 14-hour negotiations between the leaders of Normandy Four (Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko) in the Belarusian capital city of Minsk. Concurrently, Minsk hosted a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukrainian settlement.

A 13-point Package of Measures on implementation of the September 2014 Minsk agreements in particular included an agreement on cessation of fire from February 15, withdrawal of heavy armaments, as well as measures on long-term political settlement of the situation in Ukraine, including establishment of working subgroups as priority tasks.

The ceasefire however has been repeatedly violated. The self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Luhansk have repeatedly said ceasefire observation completely depends on the Ukrainian side.

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Eastern Ukraine Transport

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