MOSCOW, March 14. /TASS/. Ukrainian nationalists carried out and act of sabotage at the Avdeyevsky Coke and Chemical Plant outside Donetsk by setting it on fire, a source in the Russian Defense Ministry told TASS on Monday.
"Militants from battalions of nationalists carried out an act of sabotage at the Avdeyevsky Coke and Chemical Plant in the Donetsk Region," the source said. "A fire erupted as a result of their act of sabotage and it currently emanates an acrid and toxic smoke that keeps spreading over the nearby residential areas."
According to the source, "it is impossible to put out the fire at the moment due to continuing combat actions."
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed decrees at a ceremony in the Kremlin recognizing the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR). Putin met with DPR leader Denis Pushilin and LPR leader Leonid Pasechnik, and signed treaties with them on friendship, cooperation and mutual aid between Russia and both republics.
President Putin said in a televised address on February 24 that in response to a request from the heads of the Donbass republics, he had decided to carry out a special military operation in order to protect people "who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years." The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans to occupy Ukrainian territory.
The Russian Defense Ministry reassured earlier that Russian troops are not targeting Ukrainian cities, and are limited to surgical strikes and incapacitating Ukrainian military infrastructure, insisting that there is no threat whatsoever to the civilian population.