DONETSK, November 27. /TASS/. The Ukrainian Armed Forces in the evening and at night launched 260 artillery shells and mines on settlements in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the republic’s defense authorities told the Donetsk News Agency on Sunday.
"After 18:00, the Ukrainian side has launched 260 artillery shells of 122 and 152mm calibers and mines of 82 and 120mm calibers," the defense authority said. "From positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, they launched dozens of shells from infantry fighting vehicles, grenade launchers and small arms."
Under fire from the Ukrainian military were settlements Trudovskiye, Alexandrovka, Zaitsevo, Spartak, Zhabichevo, Sakhanka, Leninskoye, Oktyabr, the industrial area near Yasinovataya and the area of the Volvo Center.
The defense authority said also, on Saturday, the military opened fire three times on the Mayorsk checkpoint north of Gorlovka.
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. The DPR has been daily reporting more than 100 episodes of shelling with the use of weapons of 120mm and 122mm calibers.
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.