© EPA/IRINA GORBASYOVA, archive
"The situation in the republic remains tense," he said. "Over the past day, the Ukrainian military 1,510 times violated the ceasefire regime, and one serviceman was injured."
The military launched 132 artillery shells of 152 and 122mm calibers, 526 mines of 120 and 82mm calibers. They used grenade launchers, weapons of infantry fighting vehicles and small arms.
Under the fire were Gorlovka, Yasinovataya and its suburbs, Dokuchayevsk, Yasnoye, Novolaspa, Elenovka, Sosnovskoye, Kominternovo, Sakhanka, Oktyabr, Leninskoye, Bezymennoye, Alexandrovka, Trudovskiye and Staromikhailovka.
Earlier on Saturday, the DPR reported 530 shells and mines launched on the republic overnight from weapons outlawed by the Minsk agreements.
"Between 18:00 and 03:00, the Ukrainian side launched 530 artillery shells of 122 and 152mm calibers and mines of 82 and 120mm calibers on settlements Trudovskiye and Alexandrovka west of Donetsk, Staromikhailovka west of Donetsk, Novolaspa, Shirokaya Balka, the Donetsk airport area, the industrial area near Yasinovataya, settlements Spartak, Sakhanka, Bezymennoye, Kominternovo and Leninskoye" the source told the agency.
Besides heavy weapons and mortars, the Ukrainian military used grenade launchers, weapons of infantry fighting vehicles and small arms.
Units of the Ukrainian military over the past 24 hours six times opened fire on militia positions in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People's Republic (LPR), the republic's defense authority said on Saturday.
"On the area near the Kalinovka settlement they opened fire from 122mm artillery and from 82mm mortars from the direction of Luganskoye and Mironovsky," LuganskInformCenter quoted the authority.
Under fire from positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were also settlements Zheltoye, Kalinovo, the area of the monument to Prince Igor. A shell from a 152mm artillery system was launched on Lugansk from the direction of Kondrashevskaya Novaya rail station.
On August 26, the parties to the Contact Group for settling the armed civil conflict in eastern Ukraine made a yet another, ninth, attempt to attain ceasefire. The agreement they reached suggests the ceasefire takes effect as of September 1. However, the Ukrainian side keeps on shelling DPR's settlements. The DPR has been daily reporting more than 100 episodes of shelling with the use of weapons of 120mm and 122mm calibers.
Despite the ongoing provocations, the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics, the DPR and LPR (Lugansk People's Republic), on September 13 banned their servicemen to open retaliatory fire in response to provocations from Ukrainian troops. On the following day, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after talks in Kiev that Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko had also guaranteed Ukraine's readiness to observe truce in Donbass.
The Package of Measures to fulfil the September 2014 Minsk agreements, known as Minsk-2, that was signed in Minsk on February 12, 2015, envisaged a ceasefire regime between Ukrainian government forces and people's militias in the self-proclaimed republics in Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) starting from February 15, 2015, and a subsequent withdrawal of heavy weapons from the line of engagement. The deal also laid out a roadmap for a lasting settlement in Ukraine, including local elections and constitutional reform to give more autonomy to the war-torn eastern regions.
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