Following shelling with Grad rockets, civilians wounded in Donetsk, Mayor says
Earlier on Friday, the DPR representatives at the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of ceasefire reported one wounded civilian resident of the city’s Kuybyshevsky district
DONETSK, February 25. /TASS/. The bombardment of Donetsk using Grad multiple launch rocket systems resulted in civilians being wounded, Donetsk Mayor Alexey Kulemzin reported on Friday.
"Donetsk is again under fire by Ukrainian punitive expeditioners. As a result of the bombardment with the Grad multiple launch rocket systems, civilians were wounded in the central part of the Kuybyshevsky district," he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Earlier on Friday, the representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) at the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of ceasefire (JCCC) reported one wounded civilian resident of the city’s Kuybyshevsky district.
On February 17, the situation along the Contact Line in eastern Ukraine took a turn for the worse. According to the DPR mission at the JCCC, over nine days of escalation, the Ukrainian army shelled the republic’s territory 522 times, including 408 times with the use of heavy armaments. In all, 6,748 units of ammunition of various caliber were fired. The bombardments resulted in casualties among the civilians.
On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the sovereignty of the DPR and LPR. Agreements on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance were signed with their leaders.
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.
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported later on Thursday that Russian troops were not delivering strikes against Ukrainian cities. It emphasized that Ukrainian military infrastructure was being destroyed by precision weapons.