DONETSK, March 31. /TASS/. Donetsk Mayor Alexey Kulemzin has said that the Ukrainian army uses weapons outlawed under the Minsk agreements against civilians.
"The events of the past few days indicate that no place in the city is safe," Kulemzin told TASS. "Just recently the city’s central district was attacked by a Tochka-U missile carrying a cluster ammunition. Yesterday, as you have seen in the Kirovsky district, an apartment building was hit by Uragan missiles. Nobody has any doubts that weapons outlawed under the Minsk agreements are being used against the city’s civilian population."
The city is exposed to the Ukrainian army’s daily bombardments, which cause casualties. On March 30, the Ukrainian army’s large-caliber artillery shelled the Kirovsky district in the southwest of Donetsk. Two floors of an apartment building partially collapsed.
The situation on the engagement line in Donbass aggravated on February 17. The Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics (DPR and LPR) reported the worst bombardments from Ukraine in recent months. Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 launched a special military operation in Ukraine in response to a request for help from the DPR and LPR leaders with the aim of the country’s demilitarization. The DPR and LPR started their own operation to regain their territories remaining under Kiev’s control.
Minsk protocol
On September 5, 2014, the Contact Group, in the light of the Russian and Ukrainian presidents’ proposals for crisis settlement, agreed a peace plan and achieved an agreement on ceasefire in the southeast of the country. The parties inked a protocol envisaging prompt cessation of hostilities, pullback of armed units and military equipment from the engagement line, OSCE monitoring of the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian border, the release of all prisoners of war and hostages, etc. There was a special clause obliging the authorities in Kiev to carry out decentralization of power and hold early local elections. The ceasefire took effect on the same day.