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Ukrainian command in Donbas does not control 2,000 volunteer battalion fighters — DPR

Fifty items of hardware, including tanks, infantry combat vehicles, armored personnel carriers and field artillery, have been concentrated in the same area as the military grouping

© AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

MOSCOW, October 28. /TASS/. Some 2,000 fighters of the Azov, Dnipro and Lviv volunteer battalions, deployed near the disengagement line between Kiev-led forces and militias in Donbas, have gotten out of control of the Ukrainian military command, Eduard Basurin, spokesman for the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), said at a briefing Wednesday.

"According to our intelligence data, a grouping of the enemy consisting of the Azov, Dnipro and Lviv units has been revealed between the inhabited localities of Novgorodskoye and Troitskoye. The grouping, which completely got out of control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has up to 2,000 people," Basurin said.

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He added that in violation of the Minsk Agreements, 50 items of hardware, including tanks, infantry combat vehicles, armored personnel carriers and field artillery, have been concentrated in the same area.

"The leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is unable to control units of nationalistic battalions that only formally became subordinate to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry," the Donetsk News Agency quoted Basurin as saying.

Earlier, the DPR Defense Ministry spokesman said the fighters of another Ukrainian nationalistic battalion, Aidar, opened fire on DPR positions near Gorlovka on Tuesday.

"Yesterday around 9:30pm, units of the Aidar nationalist battalion opened fire from small arms at our positions near the Shirokaya Balka settlement," Donetsk News Agency quoted Basurin as saying.

He stressed that this is a provocation aimed at forcing DPR to open response fire and then accuse self-defense forces of violating the Minsk Agreements. Basurin said that such incidents happen because Ukrainian leadership is unable to control extremist units "that have formally become subject to Ukraine’s defense ministry."

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