With the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine looking increasingly under threat, Ukraine’s military on Nov. 9 resumed its practice of reporting the number of daily violations of the truce by Russian-backed forces.
The military said on its Facebook page that
Russian-backed forces in the Donbas had attacked Ukrainian front-line positions
20 times over the last 24 hours. It said the attacks had occurred all along the
entire 450-kilometer
(280-mile) front.
Combined Russian-separatist forces had used small
arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades in the series of attacks, which
started from 6 p.m. the previous day, the military said. The positions attacked
included ones in Luhansk, Artemivsk, Mayorsk, Zaitseve, Avdiivka, Pisky, Opytne,
Krasnohorivka, and Shyrokyne.
The Ukrainian military also said it was “unilaterally
continuing to adhere to the Minsk peace agreements.”
In recent days there have been numerous unconfirmed
reports in social media of a rise in attacks by Russian-backed forces on
Ukrainian positions in the Donbas. However, the Ukrainian military from the
beginning of September, when the current ceasefire came into effect, has
generally reported only isolated incidents and not given a daily count of
ceasefire violations.
At the latest peak of fighting in the Donbas, which
occurred in the summer, the Ukrainian military was reporting in excess of 100
violations of the ceasefire per day.
The news comes as Russia’s Emergency Services reported
that it sent a 44th convoy of more than 100 vehicles to eastern Ukraine with
more than 1,000 tons of cargo. Ukraine’s government has condemned the
unsanctioned Russian convoys for consistently violating the nation’s
sovereignty and territorial integrity, saying they contain weapons and other
supplies for Russian-separatist forces.
Meanwhile, the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Ukraine, which is tasked under the Feb. 12 Minsk peace agreement
with monitoring the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, has over the past week
reported a rise in the sounds of fighting in the war zone. The organization
reported on Nov. 7 that it had recorded 20 ceasefire violations on the previous
day, but that some of the incidents could include sounds from live-fire
training exercises.
The OSCE also said that its monitors had been
prevented from accessing the Izvaryne border crossing point in Luhansk Oblast. It
said armed men had detained its monitors for over an hour, and after they were
allowed to proceed to the checkpoint, an armed man who said he was the
commander of the checkpoint ordered them to leave the area.
The
OSCE said the incident was a violation both of the OSCE monitoring mission’s
mandate and of the addendum to the Minsk peace agreements.
The
Russian-backed armed groups who have seized control of the local authorities in
parts of Ukraine’s Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts have also reported an increase
of fighting in the east.
During
a briefing given on Nov. 8 at the Russian-separatist mouthpiece Donetsk News
Agency, the Donetsk separatist “defense minister,” Eduard Basurin, said the
Ukrainian side had violated the ceasefire six times in the previous day. He
also claimed that Ukrainian forces had been moving heavy weapons back to the
front line, in violation of the Minsk agreements.
The OSCE, which is charged with monitoring the
pullback of heavy weapons, said in a report issued on Nov. 7 that it had
managed to visit one of the Russian-separatists’ weapons holding site for the
first time since July 21, and found that eight D-30 122mm howitzers that it had
previously recorded were now missing from the site.
The OSCE also said it had observed within the heavy
weapons pullback zone, in government-controlled Novotoshkivske, several 120mm
anti-tank missile systems mounted on infantry fighting vehicles. The
organization said this was in violation of the weapons’ withdrawal lines.
According
to the Minsk peace agreements, both sides were to pull back heavy weapons from
the front line, establishing a buffer zone from 50 to 70 kilometers wide in
which weapons of a caliber of more than 82 mm would be banned.
Russia’s
war against Ukraine has so far claimed the lives of more than 8,000 people,
according to the United Nations, and has displaced more than 2.2 million
people, of whom 1.4 million internally, causing the worst displacement of
people in Europe since World War II.
Kyiv Post
editor Euan MacDonald can be reached at [email protected]
