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Ukrainian military more than 40 times violate ceasefire in Donetsk Republic - command

The Ukrainian military used mortars, tanks, weapons of infantry fighting and armored vehicles and small arms

DONETSK, July 23. /TASS/. The Ukrainian military over the past 24 hours 42 times opened fire on the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), the republic’s command said on Sunday.

"Over the past 24 hour, the Ukrainian Armed Forces 42 times violated ceasefire," the Donetsk News Agency quoted the command. "Under fire were 19 settlements in the republic."

The Ukrainian military used mortars, tanks, weapons of infantry fighting and armored vehicles and small arms.

The defense ministry of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) reported nine breaches.

"Kiev’s military over the past 24 hours nine times shelled the militia’s positions," LuganskInformCenter said.

On June 21, Martin Sajdik, the special envoy of the OSCE chairman-in-office said ‘peace and quiet order’ would cover the entire harvesting season from June 24 through to August 31 and therefore the parties to the Minsk talks decided to call it a ‘bread ceasefire’.

Ceasefires have been declared many a time in Donbass since the spring of 2014, when the armed civil conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine. The conflicting sides agreed them at beginning of school year, before Christmas, before Easter, on the eve of the Children’s Day and so on. Officials voiced hopes the ceasefires would grow into indefinite ones but none of the declared periods of truce would last long - the shelling resumed after a couple of weeks, in a few days or even hours.

The head of the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine, Alexander Hug, in his recent report pointed to the failure to comply with the ceasefire provisions and to pull back the weaponry. SMM reported a total of 45 civilians died because of armed actions in Donbass from January 1 through mid-June and another 216 were wounded. This is a double growth year-on-year, Hug said. In 2016, 23 people died and another 84 were wounded.