You're reading: OSCE monitors report active movements of tanks, other military vehicles in Donbas

Members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (OSCE SMM) report movements of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery systems, and military transport vehicles in Donbas.

“The SMM observed military equipment and vehicles at different locations in the Donetsk region. On the outskirts of “DPR” [the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic]-controlled Makiivka (15km east of Donetsk), the SMM saw a column of seven unmarked armored personnel carriers heading west towards Donetsk city, with one unmarked and covered military-style Ural truck,” the SMM said in a report for Jan. 29 posted on Jan. 30 evening.

The SMM also saw a stationary self-propelled 122-mm howitzer east of Zuhres controlled by the DPR, which is 30 kilometers east of Donetsk. “Two hours later, the SMM observed what it assumed was the same Howitzer five kilometers further east, now loaded on a flatbed trailer moving west towards Donetsk city.”

OSCE monitors also observed three parked civilian buses facing east near Zuhres. The buses were full of men in military uniforms, some of them with assault rifles. “The SMM could not see insignia on the uniforms,” it said.

“The SMM observed 11 tanks and one large artillery piece near “Donetsk People’s Republic”-controlled Ternove (163km north-east of Donetsk),” it said.

SMM members also saw a commercial truck bearing “Russian license plates (black plates with white letters)” apparently belonging to a crew repairing a high-voltage power transmission line “running across the border to the Russian Federation” near Stepanivka, which 70 kilometers southeast of Donetsk.