DONETSK, October 9. /TASS/. A total of 252 episodes of shelling by Ukrainian troops were reported in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in the past day, the situation along the line of engagement remains tense, Eduard Basurin, a spokesman for the DPR operations command said on Sunday.
"During the past day, a total of 252 ceasefire violations by Ukrainian troops, including 136 with the use of weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements, were reported," the Donetsk News Agency quoted him as saying.
According to Basurin, Ukrainian troops conducted mortar fire at the city of Yasinovatay, the settlements of Krutaya Balka, Leninskoye and Sakhanka. Firearms were used to shell the settlement of Zaitsevo north of Gorlovka, the settlement of Alexandrovka in Donetsk’s western suburb and the village of Vasilyevka near Yasinovataya.
On Saturday, two civilians were wounded and 15 houses were damaged in shelling by Ukrainian troops in the settlement of Sakhanka. According to the DPR command, at least 18 houses were damaged during the day in shelling by Ukrainian troops.
On August 26, the parties to the Contact Group for settling the armed civil conflict in eastern Ukraine made a yet another, ninth, attempt to attain ceasefire. The agreement they reached suggests the ceasefire takes effect as of September 1. However the Ukrainian side keeps on shelling DPR’s settlements.
Despite the ongoing provocations, the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics, the DPR and LPR (Lugansk People’s Republic), on September 13 banned their servicemen to open retaliatory fire in response to provocations from Ukrainian troops. On the following day, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after talks in Kiev that Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko had also guaranteed Ukraine’s readiness to observe truce in Donbass.
The Package of Measures to fulfil the September 2014 Minsk agreements, known as Minsk-2, that was signed in Minsk on February 12, 2015, envisaged a ceasefire regime between Ukrainian government forces and people’s militias in the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) starting from February 15, 2015 and a subsequent withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of engagement. The deal also laid out a roadmap for a lasting settlement in Ukraine, including local elections and constitutional reform to give more autonomy to the war-torn eastern regions.