Full-scale fighting has returned to Ukraine’s war-torn east after several months of relative calm, with nine Ukrainian soldiers killed in the last three days, Ukrainian officials say.
The fighting has intensified over the last week, resulting
in almost daily losses for the Ukrainian army.
The tension has prompted the Ukrainian military to warn
international observers that they may return artillery and mortars to the front
line, Andriy Lysenko, presidential spokesman for the war zone, said at a
briefing in Kyiv on Nov. 16.
“If there is a further escalation of the situation, the
military command will be forced to return artillery and mortars to the front
line in order to defend Ukraine’s positions and preserve the lives of
servicemen,” Lysenko told journalists. “The Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe has already been warned about this.”
Lysenko’s warning comes after the Ukrainian military
suffered considerable losses in the past several days.
Five soldiers were killed in fights on Nov. 13: four near
Mariyinka
village in Donetsk
Oblast and one near Novotoshkivka village in Luhansk Oblast, Vladyslav Seleznev,
spokesman of the General Staff, told the Kyiv Post.
Near Novotoshkivka, a village near the front line, Ukrainian
servicemen endured a two-hour fight with a reconnaissance group of the enemy.
Two Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the skirmish.
On Nov. 14, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and eight
wounded between the Butovka and Zenit coal mines, located near Donetsk airport.
Ukrainian military engineers came under fire from mortars when an enemy drone spotted
them. “It was a horrible picture by the end,” Seleznev said.
On Nov. 15, three soldiers were killed when they were doing
demining work on a crossroad near Zolotein the Luhansk Oblast. “The
explosion was so huge that nobody had a chance (to survive),” Seleznev
said.
Seleznev added that Russian troops and their separatist
proxies used 82 mm caliber mortars several times.The weapons were supposed to
have been withdrawn from the front line under the peace agreement reached last
February in Minsk.
A video posted on the Facebook page of Ukraine’s anti-terrorist
operation said to have been shot on the night of Nov. 13-14 appears to show
separatists firing towards Ukrainian-controlled Krasnohorivka using a rocket
artillery system. According to the Minsk peace deal, both sides are obliged to
withdraw large- and medium-caliber artillery from the front line.
There were reports of continued fighting on Nov. 16.
The Ukrainian military recorded 32 instances of shelling in the
last 24 hours, and at least five cases of shelling on the morning of Nov. 16
alone, according to Seleznev.
Anatoliy Proshyn, the Ukrainian military spokesman for Sector
A – the section of front near rebel-controlled Luhansk – said shootouts have taken
place there every evening over the last seven days.
“(The separatists) were shooting at Novotoshkivka for
about 25 minutes yesterday,” Proshyn said. He added that the separatists
also shot at a checkpoint in Stanitsa Luhanska on Nov. 15. The checkpoint
connects the Ukrainian-controlled part of Luhansk Oblast with rebel-controlled Luhansk.
Heorgy Tuka, governor of the Luhansk Oblast, said the checkpoint
– the only way for civilians to cross the frontline in the region – may be
closed if shooting continues.
“The situation is tense. They shoot at us from time to
time. We don’t respond. We have an order to only observe,” Oksana Chorna, a
medical volunteer helping Ukrainian soldiers near Stanitsa Luhanska, told the
Kyiv Post.
Kyiv Post staff writer
Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at
[email protected].
Kyiv Post editor Allison Quinn contributed reporting.
