MOSCOW, August 8. /TASS/. The Ukrainian side uses residential houses in Krasnotorsk and Artemovsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) to deploy artillery, multiple rocket launch systems and mortars, Mikhail Mizintsev, the headquarters head and chief of Russia’s National Defense Management Center, said on Monday.

"In Krasnotorsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic, Ukrainian nationalists deployed artillery and multiple rocket launch systems on the territories of private houses and are using them to shell positions of Russian forces to provoke them to open retaliatory fire," he said.

According to Mizintsev, who also heads the Russian Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response in Ukraine, local residents are forced to stay at their homes as a human shield. "In Artemovsk in the Donetsk People’s Republic, neo-Nazis organized artillery and mortar positions in the courtyards of residential houses," he said, adding that locals are prohibited to leave their homes under the pretext of security considerations. Any attempts to get evacuated from the area are thwarted.