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Ukrainian forces twice opened fire against Luhansk Republic over past day

The Ukrainian armed forces attacked an area of summer cottages with small arms and grenade launchers

© AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka

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MOSCOW, December 7. /TASS/. The Ukrainian forces over the past 24 hours twice opened fire against communities in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic’s Slavyanoserbsk district, a spokesman for the republican Emergencies Ministry said.

The Ukrainian armed forces attacked an area of summer cottages with small arms and grenade launchers. An air defense system ZU-23-2 and an 82-mm mortar attacked the village of Smeloye. There were no casualties or destruction, the LuhanskInformCenter quotes the official as saying.

Earlier, local police officials repeatedly said Kiev was in breach of the Minsk Accords and refused to pull weapons away from the engagement line. A special monitoring mission of the OSCE for its part said the Luhansk republic had handed over to the OSCE officials the full list of armaments and military vehicles, pulled back under the Minsk Accords, as well as the places where they were being kept at the moment.

At the end of September the Contact Group in Minsk and its working subgroup for security met in Minsk to initial an agreement on the pullback of weapons with calibers under 100-mm and tanks 15 kilometers away from the engagement line on each side. The pullback was carried out over 41 days in two phases — tanks were the first to be removed. Artillery pieces and mortars followed. In the area of responsibility of the Luhansk People’s Republic the pullback began on October 3 to be completed on November 10.

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