"Over the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian
Armed Forces 44 times violated ceasefire", the Donetsk People’s Republic's
command said.
DONETSK,
July 8. /TASS/. Ukraine’s Armed Forces over the past 24 hours 44 times violated
ceasefire as they shelled the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR),
the republic’s command told the Donetsk News Agency on Saturday.
"Over
the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian Armed Forces 44 times violated ceasefire as
they used mortars, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored vehicles, grenade
launchers and small arms against the republic’s 16 settlements," the
command said.
On June 21,
Martin Sajdik, the special envoy of the OSCE chairman-in-office said ‘peace and
quiet order’ would cover the entire harvesting season from June 24 through to
August 31 and therefore the parties to the Minsk talks decided to call it a
‘bread ceasefire’.
Ceasefires
have been declared many a time in Donbass since the spring of 2014, when the
armed civil conflict broke out in eastern Ukraine. The conflicting sides agreed
them at beginning of school year, before Christmas, before Easter, on the eve
of the Children’s Day and so on. Officials voiced hopes the ceasefires would
grow into indefinite ones but none of the declared periods of truce would last
long - the shelling resumed after a couple of weeks, in a few days or even
hours.
The head of
the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine, Alexander Hug, in his
recent report pointed to the failure to comply with the ceasefire provisions
and to pull back the weaponry.
SMM
reported a total of 45 civilians died because of armed actions in Donbass from
January 1 through mid-June and another 216 were wounded. This is a double
growth year-on-year, Hug said. In 2016, 23 people died and another 84 were
wounded.
Source: ITAR-TASS 08-07-2017
