MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/. The defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) has said the chemical threat persists due to continuing shellings of the Donetsk filtration plant by Ukrainian forces.
Highly toxic liquid chlorine is used at filtration plants for water purification. A source from the "Water of Donbass" company familiar with the situation said that the volume of chlorine at the Donetsk filtration plant exceeds three tons.
"Heads of the utility company ‘Water of Donbass’ and workers cannot start repair works at this facility, and the chemical threat may emerge due to continuing shellings," the spokesman for the defense ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Eduard Basurin told Donetsk News Agency on Wednesday.
Basurin noted that observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) were not able to carry out an inspection near the plant because of continuing shellings by Ukrainian forces.
The work of the Donetsk filtration plant was temporarily suspended on March 13 due to shellings by Ukrainian forces. However, water was supplied to towns and settlements in DPR without interruptions via a reserve line. According to the "Company ‘Water of Donbass’", only the settlement of Avdeyevka was left without water.
The Donetsk filtration plant supplies water to Donetsk, Yasinovataya, Vasilyevka and Spartak controlled by DPR, and Avdeyevka, Krasnogorovka and Verkhnetoretskoye controlled by Kiev.
At the meeting of the Contact Group on January 13 the sides supported the initiative of Russia’s envoy Boris Gryzlov on ensuring complete ceasefire on the territory of Donbass. This is the seventh attempt to fully observe the ceasefire regime in Ukraine’s south-east. At the recent meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk the participants expressed regret over continuing violations of ceasefire regime in Donbass.