Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has given its soldiers permission to return fire in eastern Ukraine, a sign that the relative calm since early September has given way to renewed fighting.
Five Ukrainian servicemen were wounded in war-weary Donbas on Nov. 3, according
to military spokesman Andriy Lysenko, while the following day saw “an
activation by separatists along the front line, and all incidents of ceasefire
violations happened during the day time.”
Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, the presidential spokesman for affairs in the war
zone, said at a briefing on Nov. 4 that separatist forces had fired on Avdiivka
and Pisky with mortars and small arms, and as a result Ukrainian soldiers had
been given permission to return fire if necessary.
“Starting from 6:07 a.m., the terrorists fired at our positions using
small arms and automatic grenade launchers in Avdiivka, Opytne, Pisky, and
Shastye. A sniper was also working in Avdiivka. The terrorists also fired on
our soldiers in Trekhizbenka using grenade launchers,” a statement from the
press center of the counterterrorism operations said on Nov. 3.
The remarks came after another military statement described the
situation as “mostly calm.”
Lysenko described recent attacks by separatists as “provocations” rather
than attempts to seize more territory.
But he cautioned against dramatizing the attacks, saying the increased
tension “doesn’t mean that this is a preparation for an active offensive.”
“These are provocations that are happening –
one way for the separatists to provoke Ukrainian soldiers into returning
powerful fire in response. But we are withstanding these provocations, and
unfortunately, our guys are getting wounded, though we won’t give in to these
provocations and will not give the enemy the chance to accuse the Ukrainian
side of violating the Minsk (ceasefire) agreements,” Lysenko said.
Calls by the Kyiv Post to Lysenko to clarify
whether or not Ukrainian forces had returned fire to the provocations were not
answered.
But soldiers on the ground disputed claims that
“everything is calm.”
“I can say that things have not been quiet in
the Donetsk area throughout this whole (ceasefire) period,” said Vladimir
Sheredega of the Dnipro-1 Battalion. Sheredega left his position in Pisky
several weeks ago, but said he is in touch with fellow fighters on an almost
daily basis.
Defense officials are touting the “everything
is calm” line, he said, because that’s “the general position that we are
working under at the West’s behest.”
“For more than a year, they have been repeating
the mantra ‘no shelling,’ ‘weapons have been withdrawn,’ ‘we are observing the
ceasefire’ and so on. In reality, this is all nonsense.,” Sheredega
said.
“People just stopped paying attention once the
really active fighting died down” he said, but the war “will continue for
decades to come, with periodic spikes in fighting.”
The Russian-backed separatist side has also
been sounding the alarm over a spike in fighting, though they place all the
blame on Ukrainian forces. On Nov. 3, a report broadcast in Russian state-run
media cited separatist representatives as saying Ukrainian soldiers had shelled
the outskirts of Donetsk and “broken the ceasefire.”
On Nov. 1, monitors
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe – positioned at
the Donetsk railway station – heard 114 explosions three to five
kilometers to the west, northwest.
In addition, OSCE
monitors “heard multiple bursts of fire from anti-aircraft guns,
rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine-guns, heavy-machine-guns, and other
small-arms and light-weapons,” according to a statement the group sent on Nov.
2.
Staff
writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected].
