Ukrainian forces are shelling Donbass once again. The territory of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) has been under fire more than 1600 times within a day. Both heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems have been used. Almost all the settlements along the contact line have been damaged with 9 people wounded. The world has seen the footage from Avdeevka showing OSCE inspectors next to Ukrainian tanks, which should not be there under the Minsk agreements. And the tanks seem to go unnoticed. Our war correspondent Alexander Sladkov reports from Donbass.
This is the third day Donetsk has been under fire. Kievsky and Kuibyshevsky districts of the DPR are the most damaged. During rare lulls civilians try to fix up their broken houses to conserve heat. It's broken through. Shelled with Grad both from the left and the right. All the windows are broken. There are no military facilities near the damaged houses. Not the military or tanks are under fire, but residential areas. It is no coincidence because the boiler house has been shelled five times as well as the heating network. In the house, behind the house, in front of the house!
A little boy saved his deaf parents today in Donetsk by quickly giving them a signal of alarm. There was a very scary shelling. We even saw an explosion, smoke. And there was no hot water.
Donetsk community services spent a full 24 hours restoring electricity, heat, and water supply to the city after the Ukrainian shelling. The elderly and disabled had to be evacuated from the shelled Kievsky district. Here's your bag. Here's your cane. In the Republic of Lugansk an officer of the armed forces of Ukraine joined the the people's militia, refusing to fire at his own people. When they started to bring up the mine throwers, I gave in the weapons, my helmet and body armor and said that I was leaving. I heard my commander saying he would initiate a criminal case against me. I told him: "I don't give a -, go ahead, but I'm not gonna shoot at my own people".
The footage from Avdeevka is available on the Internet. It shows tanks of the armed forces of Ukraine standing in the residential sector in the presence of OSCE personnel. There has been no official reports on the situation. The cannonade is thundering on the outskirts of Donetsk: the heavy artillery of the armed forces of Ukraine strikes in the area of Putilovsky bridge, Makeyevka, Yasinovataya and the industrial zone of Avdeevka.
