DONETSK, September 12. /TASS/. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has recorded on Saturday that new engineering work is being carried out on positions of Ukraine’s Armed Forces near the settlement of Shumy outside Gorlovka along the line disengaging the parties to the conflict, the DPR mission to the Joint Center for Ceasefire Control and Coordination (JCCC) said.
"At 16.35, it was again documented that the Ukrainian Armed Forces were conducting engineering activities on their positions near the settlement of Shumy," the Donetsk news agency said citing the DPR representative to the JCCC.
On September 5, DPR’s head, Denis Pushilin, issued an order to the republic’s forces to open fire to destroy Ukraine’s engineering facilities along the contact line outside Shumy mounted in breach of the agreements. Pushilin called on the Ukrainian command to pull out soldiers from the area before 08:00 local time on September 7. Afterwards, Pushilin postponed the operation to dismantle the trenches until Wednesday, September 9.
On Wednesday, an emergency meeting of the Contact Group seeking peace for eastern Ukraine reached an agreement via a video call for a DPR-Kiev joint inspection with participation of the OSCE near Shumy. Nevertheless, the inspection did not take place. Russia’s Plenipotentiary Representative to the Contact Group Boris Gryzlov said Ukraine derailed the joint inspection since Kiev’s representatives refused to let the inspectors into the area, where the construction of new Ukrainian facilities had been spotted, and attempted to remove the Donbass representatives from that mission.