© AP Photo/ Petr David Josek
Speaking to the Donetsk News Agency on Monday and citing DPR intelligence, Basurin said that the mercenaries and volunteer troops have occupied homes in the villages they're based in "despite the protests of local residents."
"Near the village of Shirokaya Balka, two km from the line of contact, two trucks arrived, carrying 40 Polish mercenaries," the military spokesman said. "In the area near the village of Verhnetoretskoe, four km from the front, the arrival of up to 100 personnel Right Sector volunteer corps has been observed," he added.
Also on Monday, Basurin reported that the Ukrainian army has placed heavy artillery, tanks and mortars in territories near the front line, including Kleban Byk, Gorlovka and outside the city of Donetsk.
Comment: Ukraine moves massive force up to Lugansk frontline
Lugansk People's Republic intelligence has reported the concentration of shock troops of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the frontline in the Stanitsa-Lugansk district. This was reported to a correspondent of Novorossiya Information Agency today at a briefing in Lugansk by the LPR People's Militia's official spokesperson, Major Andrey Marochko.
Marochko reported: "A strike force of the UAF has been concentrated in the residential area of Krasny Oktyabr composed of the 15th motorized infantry brigade which accounts for around 3,500 soldiers and more than 200 armored vehicles."
"It has also been established that in the zone of responsibility of the UAF's 93rd brigade in the Orekhovo district, an unidentified unit of the Ukrainian National Guard has arrived whose composition includes a tactical company armed with two 2B9 Vasilek mortars of 82 mm calibre and AGS-17 automatic grenade launchers," Marochko added.
Last Thursday, Basurin said that DPR intelligence had reported spotting eighty mercenaries, believed to be French and Italian, at the Kramatorsk airport, controlled by Kiev forces.
On October 15, human intelligence sources from the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic reported the arrival of "several hundred" foreign mercenaries, believed to come from countries including the US, Canada, the Baltic states and Poland. The mercs were reported to have created three camps in the Ukrainian-controlled settlements of Bobrovskoye and Bobrovo, near Severodonetsk.
On October 12, it was reported that the Ukrainian military unsuccessfully attempted to break through militia positions near Mariupol, leaving fifteen foreign mercenaries dead and another 25 troops injured. Last week, DPR parliament speaker Denis Pushilin said that Ukrainian forces near Mariupol have been conducting regular probing attacks using 'significant' forces. "In the event of a large-scale offensive, we will find the strength and means for an adequate counter-offensive," the official warned.
Late last month, observers from the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission confirmed spotting Georgian-speaking mercenaries near the front line in Lugansk.
The civil war in eastern Ukraine began in April 2014, when Kiev moved the Ukrainian army into the restless regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, where local residents came out in opposition to new authorities taking power in the Maidan coup d'état in February of that year. Locals soon formed militia units, and the two sides engaged in a fratricidal war against one another until February 2015, when they agreed to a ceasefire deal in talks brokered by Russia, France, Germany and Ukraine in the Belarusian capital of Minsk. Since then, a shaky ceasefire has been in place, although violations are reported almost daily. Kiev has been accused of refusing to adhere to the Minsk Peace Plan, by attempting to see its provisions fulfilled out of order. The leaders of the fledgling Donbass republics, meanwhile, have repeatedly insisted that the agreement's thirteen points must be implemented in the order they were agreed to.
I don't think Poroshenko runs the place anymore, do you? Has anyone seen him alive lately? This is sounding a lot like the U.S. where the Pentagon is running the show and Congress just sit around waiting for Netanyahu to show up again. He is such a good speaker.
How many minutes will it take Russia to overrun the Ukraine?