Ukraine on May 3 dismissed as "a pack of lies" a statement by Moscow that the Ukrainian army shelled Donetsk airport and nearly the residential districts of Donetsk on May 2.
The Ministry of Defense of Ukraine hereby declares the above statement to be a pack of lies aiming to undermine public confidence in the government, in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and in other military services, and ruin the international image of Ukraine as a nation that completely fulfills military and political commitments made in Minsk,” the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
The ministry claimed that May 2 had set a record for the frequency of attacks by “illegal armed units” on the Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk airport area, and that some of the attacks had involved the use of artillery with calibers of more than 100 millimeters that was to have been withdrawn from the frontline under the Minsk agreements.
“Over a 24-hour period, militants on 35 occasions opened fire on our main positions near Pisky, Avdiyivka and Opytne. In nine of these attacks, 120-millimeter mortars were used, 122-millimeter artillery was used in five attacks and 152-millimeter artillery on one attack, and in one attack a BM-21 Grad multiple rocket launcher was used in firing on our positions near Avdiyivka,” the statement said.
It said the Ukrainian forces had retaliated but used artillery that was not covered by the withdrawal agreement.
“There was only one occasion, between 9.35 p.m. and 9.45 p.m. hours, where the anti-terrorist operation forces were forced to retaliate with the use of 82-millimeter mortars, which are not banned by the Minsk agreements, and two occasions where they used small arms. The mortar fire specifically targeted enemy positions in the vicinity of the former Donetsk airport, positions that Ukrainian artillery had long-time experience of firing on, which fully ruled out the possibility of any of the shells landing outside the target area, namely hitting the adjacent residential district of Donetsk,” the ministry said.
Andriy Taran, the Ukrainian representative in the Joint Control and Coordination Center for ceasefire monitoring, said neither the Defense Ministry nor the armed forces general staff of Ukraine possessed any evidence to corroborate an allegation by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday that Ukrainian heavy artillery attacked Donetsk on May 2.
Lavrov made the allegation in a telephone call with OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Ivica Dacic, who is the Serbian foreign minister, as reported in a statement on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s website.
“Unconfirmed information on the alleged bombardment of residential districts in Donetsk by units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine must not be the basis for official statements by the ministers of foreign affairs of other states,” Taran said at a joint briefing in Soledar, Donetsk Oblast.
In a Facebook post, the Russian Foreign Ministry had said that “in connection with reports that Ukrainian armed forces had launched heavy artillery attacks on Donetsk, the minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, telephoned the OSCE chairman-in-office, Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic, and urged him to exercise his powers to have the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine demand that Kyiv immediately end gross violations of the Minsk agreements.”
Dacic promised all appropriate measures, the ministry said.
