MOSCOW, June 20, /ITAR-TASS/. Moscow expresses resolute protests over the shelling of Russian territory by the Ukrainian military and it demands an immediate investigation of this provocative act, the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday night.
"Friday, June 20, Russia's Novoshakhtinsk border checkpoint (in the southern Rostov region Itar-Tass) underwent shelling by the Ukrainian military," it said. "The incident has inflicted a partial destruction and a customs officer has received sever wounds."
"The Russian side expressed a resolute protest over the aggressive action," the statement said. "We demand that Kiev do an urgent and prompt investigation of all the circumstances attendant to this crime, which broke the basic norms and principles of international law."
“The case in hand is a blunt provocation aimed at disrupting the Geneva accord on an earliest possible de-escalation of Ukraine’s internal conflict,” the ministry said.
“How can this incident be correlated with a ceasefire, which the Kiev authorities declared today?” it asked with a somewhat rhetoric note.
A spokesman for the border guard force of the Federal Security Service (FSB) told Itar-Tass a combat action between the Ukrainian volunteer guards, who exercised control over the Dolzhansky checkpoint on the Ukrainian side of the border, and the units of the Ukrainian army bolstered by squads of the ‘national guard’ broke out at around 18:40 Moscow Standard Time.
No one among the border guards or residents of the area on the Russian side, the spokesman said.
Ukrainian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying the Armed Forces were not using fire from artillery weapons or mortars in the areas adjoining the Ukrainian-Russian state border.