PRESS RELEASE
Escalation in the Donbass Targeted at Destroying Minsk Agreement
Aug. 14, 2015 (EIRNS)—The drumbeat coming out of the U.S./NATO-installed Kiev regime is for war in the Donbass. The escalation of fighting this week, in the region about half way between Mariupol on the coast and the city of Donetsk, followed the failure of the Kiev regime to sign the document at Minsk, last week, that would have solidified the agreement to withdraw heavy weapons of up to 100mm caliber from the line of contact on both sides.
Instead of signing the document, Kiev’s representative demanded numerous changes unacceptable to the two breakaway republics in the east. The shelling on both sides, from Horlivka, northeast of Donetsk, all the way down to the coast, has been much more intense than was recorded the previous week.
Oleksandr Turchynov, the chief of the regime’s National Security and Defense Council, who was in the Donbass region this week, claimed that the Ukrainian military logged 153 attacks by the separatists overnight, representing “a black record” since a truce was sealed in February.
Eduard Basurin, military spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic replied by calling Turchynov a liar. “Ukraine’s statement on our preparation of an offensive is just another lie,” Basurin told Bloomberg by phone from Donetsk. “The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe doesn’t record our re-deployment of heavy weapons.”
Major-General Borys Kremenetsky, the Ukrainian head of the Joint Center for Control and Coordination—the joint Urkainian-Russian military body set up under the Minsk agreements—is keeping up the drumbeat by demanding that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) record the number of cases of alleged use of heavy weaponry by the independence forces. “Illegal armed formations on the territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions continue to brazenly violate the Minsk agreements and the ceasefire regime,” he claims.
Officials of the D.P.R. have been complaining for months about nightly shelling of civilian areas of Donetsk city, Horlivka, and other areas along the line of contact, many instances of which have been confirmed by the OSCE monitoring mission. They are rarely reported outside of the Russian news agencies, but when the Kiev regime charges that its military checkpoints are being shelled by the other side, those make world headlines.
