The Ukrainian-controlled front-line city of Avdiyivka, 600 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, had its water supplies cut amid fresh attacks by Russian-backed forces over the weekend.
The water reserves of the city, which has a population of 22,000, had run completely dry by the morning of June 6, three days after the Donetsk water filtration station was disabled amid almost continuous shelling in the area.
The station is situated on the very front line, east of Avdiyvka, between the positions of the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed forces. The station provides water supplies to over 600,000 people in Avdiyivka, Donetsk, and Yasynuvata. This year the station has been put out of operation on at least five occasions, causing water cuts in the war-torn region.
On June 2, the station was halted for repairs after fighting caused damage to its energy supplies.
Ukrainian army officers in the Joint Center for Coordination and Control (JCCC, a military liaison body) reported that on the evening of June 3 the area around the station was repeatedly hit by mortar fire from Russian-backed forces deployed near the occupied town of Kruta Balka, just one kilometer to the northeast of the station. The station then stopped operating.
On June 6, the local authorities and international charities started delivering drinking water to civilians in the affected area.
In Avdiyivka, people have gathered in long queues in the city streets to get fresh water, Donetsk Oblast Governor Pavlo Zhebrivskiy said on June 6.
In a statement, Zhebrivsky also said that the Ukrainian representatives in the JCCC had gained verbal consent from the Russian side for a ceasefire in the area for June 6-7 in order to repair energy supplies to the Donetsk filtration station and resume water supplies to Avdiyivka.
On the morning of June 6, as the ceasefire started, repair work at the station was launched.
“A repair team, accompanied by minesweepers, and representatives of the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe and the JCCC, has come to fix the power lines near the Donetsk filtration station. The specialists will inspect the line and specify what kind and what amount of work is needed,” Zhebrivskiy wrote on June 6.
The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine called on the sides to make every effort to protect critical civilian infrastructure in the Donbas war zone.
“…Conflict-related damage to water filtration facilities, chemical facilities, and agricultural businesses represent a major threat to the environment, the organization’s chief monitor Ertugrul Apakan was quoted as saying on its Facebook page.
“Should these facilities be damaged, it could produce in an ecological disaster, resulting in more hardship to an already deeply affected population on both sides of the contact line.”
Meanwhile, the front-line town of Pavlopil some 20 kilometers northeast of Mariupol had energy, water, and gas supplies cut off after shelling by Russian-backed forces overnight into June 6.
No casualties were reported, and repair work was launched to restore vital supplies, according to Ukraine’s National Police.
Elsewhere in Donetsk Oblast, the police said a 27-year-old male civilian was wounded and hospitalized overnight on June 6 after a residential area in the government-controlled town of Verkhniotoretske, 10 kilometers southwest of Russian-occupied Horlivka, was shelled.
