LUGANSK, February 21. /TASS/. Sixty-six ceasefire violations by Ukrainian troops were reported in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) by the end of Sunday, Ivan Filiponenko, spokesman for the LPR defense ministry, said.

"As of 00:00, the LPR representative office in the Joint Center for Ceasefire Control and Coordination has already recorded 66 violations of the ceasefire. Ukrainian militants shelled 24 settlements in the republic using weapons prohibited by the Minsk agreements," Filiponenko wrote in the Telegram channel of the People's Militia of the LPR on Monday.

Late on Sunday, the representative of the People's Militia of the republic said that 3 civilians of the republic had been wounded as a result of shelling by the Ukrainian troops.

According to him, servicemen of the 57th separate motorized infantry brigade fired at the settlement of Prishib from 120-mm mortars. As a result, "one house was destroyed and one civilian received a traumatic amputation of the lower limb." In the village of Znamenka, "two civilians received shrapnel wounds," the report says.

Filiponenko also said that in the village of Lozovoe a house has been burned down as a result of shelling by the Kiev security forces from a grenade launcher and a heavy machine gun.

The situation along the contact line in eastern Ukraine took a turn for the worse in the morning of February 17. The self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics report the most massive shelling by the Ukrainian military over the past months. There have been no reports of deaths, but one civilian woman was wounded and the shelling damaged some civilian facilities. Amid the mounting threat of combat actions, the self-proclaimed republics on Friday announced the evacuation of civilians to Russia. On Saturday, the Donbass republics announced general mobilization.