According to the ministry, overall, during the
shellings, the Ukrainian side fired 38 shells from 82-millimeter and
120-millimeter caliber mortars.
MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. Ukraine’s army has shelled the territory of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) from armaments prohibited by the Minsk Agreements 172 times over the past day, the DPR Defense Ministry told the Donetsk News Agency on Saturday.
"Over the past day, Ukraine’s army has shelled the republic’s territory 172 times," a ministry spokesman said.
According to the ministry, overall, during the
shellings, the Ukrainian side fired 38 shells from 82-millimeter and
120-millimeter caliber mortars. Fire was also delivered from grenade launchers
and small arms. The inhabited localities of Zaytsevo and Krutaya Balka
near Gorlovka, Yasinovataya and Dokuchayevsk, as well as the village of
Sakhanka in the south of the DPR came under shelling. Besides, under fire from
the Ukrainian army were the northern and western outskirts of Donetsk.
Participants of the Contact Group on settlement of the
situation in eastern Ukraine on April 29 agreed on the occasion of the Orthodox
Easter to establish a regular "regime of silence" starting from
midnight April 30. But the militia and Kiev’s army keep accusing each other of
truce violations.
Since the fall of 2014, when the parties to the conflict
first sat down to the negotiating table in the Belarusian capital Minsk, there
have been seven of them.
The previous time the sides agreed to stop fire was in
January 2016. At talks in Minsk on January 13, 2016, the Contact Group on
settlement in Donbass agreed on a ceasefire - the seventh since the conflict
start, from January 14. Both parties to the conflict have repeatedly accused
each other of violating the deal.
Participants of the Contact Group on settlement of the
situation in Donbass on February 12, 2015 signed in Minsk the Package of
Measures on implementation of the Minsk Agreements, earlier agreed with members
of the Normandy Four (Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine).
The document, dubbed "Minsk-2", envisions in
particular pardon through enactment of a law forbidding persecution and
punishment of people in relation to events in Donbass, cessation of fire,
withdrawal of heavy armaments from the contact line.
It also stipulates start of dialogue on restoration of
social and economic ties of Kiev and Donbass, as well as reform of the Ukrainian
constitution aimed at decentralization and strengthening of the "special
status of separate districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions".
Source: ITAR-TASS 15-05-2016
