More war crimes by Kiev junta: Ukrainian fighters shelled Donetsk suburb – DPR

Ukraine’s armed groups on Thursday evening fired 19 shelled on a northern suburb of Donetsk and the town of Dokuchayevsk, a source in the law enforcement agencies of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) told the Donetsk News Agency.

“From 18:00 until 20:30, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were shelling the village of Spartak, the surroundings of the airport and Dokuchayevsk. A total of 14 shells of the 82-millimeter caliber and five 120-mm caliber mines were fired on the territories,” the source said.

He said the Ukrainian armed punitives were in their positions near the inhabited localities of Novotroitskoye, Opytnoye and Butovskaya mine. They used mortars and antitank guided missiles. Information on those injured and destruction is being specified.

Earlier, the DPR Defense Ministry reported that the Ukrainian army shelled DPR areas on the disengagement line 56 times. The most intense fire was delivered on the village of Shirokaya Balka on the western outskirts of Gorlovka, Dokuchayevsk and the village of Kominternovo in southern Donbass, as well as Donetsk Airport.

Participants of the Contact Group on settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine in late April agreed on a comprehensive ceasefire in Donbass since midnight April 30.

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”.