A Woman Killed By Ukraine Sniper In Donetsk

A sniper from the Armed Forces of Ukraine (VSU) has shot dead a civilian in the Petrovsky District of the city of Donetsk, district administration chief Maxim Zhukovsky said Wednesday.

“A civilian of the village of Trudovskiye in the Petrovsky District [the western outskirts of Donetsk] was killed by a shot from a VSU sniper. The injured woman died on the spot. The bullet hit her head,” the Donetsk News Agency quoted Zhukovsky as saying.

He said the woman was about 60 years old. She was near her home at the moment of the shot.

The Petrovsky District of Donetsk has constantly been under fire from the Ukrainian army and national battalions. The first shelling of residential areas there was registered in July last year.

Massive shelling of residential neighborhoods, including with the use of aviation, has killed thousands and led to a humanitarian disaster in east Ukraine since Kiev in April 2014 announced the start of an “antiterrorism operation” there, which involved the Armed Forces, the Interior Ministry’s National Guard and volunteer battalions made up of Euromaidan activists, many of whom hold far-right and neo-Nazi views.

Ukraine has regularly violated the ceasefire regime imposed as part of the Package of Measures on implementation of the September 2014 Minsk Agreements. The Package (Minsk-2) was signed on February 12, 2015 in the Belarusian capital Minsk by participants of the Contact Group on settlement in Donbas.

The situation in eastern Ukraine has deteriorated in recent weeks, with the number of reports on shelling and civilian deaths increasing. The Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics have repeatedly said that the observance of the ceasefire that took effect February 15 depends solely on the Ukrainian side.