DONETSK, April 1. /TASS/. A team of workers got under shelling as they restored electricity lines at the Donetsk water purification plant, which remained in blackout from March 29, command of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said on Saturday.
"The teams, which were repairing the electricity lines at the water purification plant, bot under fire from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which used mortars of 120mm," the Donetsk news agency quoted the source. "This fact was registered by representatives of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission and the Joint Coordination Center for Ceasefire Monitoring from the Russian side, who are at the plant now."
The personnel is being evacuated now.
"Once again, we see that the Ukrainian side is not ready to observe its promises to support ceasefire," the republic’s command said.
The water purification plant was demined on March 4, but as on the following day the Ukrainian military shelled the plant once again, cutting it off electricity, the plant’s personnel was evacuated once again.
The plant is located between Avdeyevka and Yasinovataya and supplies water to settlements on both sides of the contact line: Donetsk, Yasinovataya, Vassilyevka and Spartak under the control of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as Avdeyevka, Krasnogorovka and Verkhnetoretskoye, controlled by Kiev troops. The plant has been repeatedly shelled during the conflict.
Overnight to February 24, Ukrainian troops heavily pounded the plant, which was hit eight times. The plant was stopped and the personnel evacuated. The DPR operational command said heavy weaponry had been used. The fire came from the positions of Kiev troops from the area of Avdeyevka.
On March 29, after yet another shelling, the water purification plant remained in blackout. On that day, after a meeting of the Contact Group, Russia’s ambassador to the talks Boris Gryzlov said the parties had agreed to observe ceasefire from midnight on April 1, 2017 "in connection to the Easter holiday."
Members of the Contact Group on the settlement in eastern Ukraine have said more than ten times since the autumn of 2014 that an agreement had been reached on the cessation of hostilities in the region. However, the ceasefire was disrupted on numerous occasions, with the parties to the conflict accusing each other of violating the truce.