MOSCOW, February 24. /TASS/. Deputy Head of the DPR’s People's Militia Eduard Basurin said that the intensity of the shelling on the line of contact was increasing, and that Ukrainian military personnel were not laying down their weapons.

"I can’t say what’s going on inside Ukraine, [but] I’ll tell [you] about the contact line. The intensity of shelling by the Ukrainian military is mounting <...>, currently they are not laying down their weapons, so the situation is very complicated, since the military grouping is very large," Basurin said in an interview with Rossiya 24 (Russia 24) TV channel on Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a televised address on Thursday morning that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision 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 of occupying Ukrainian territories.