Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard

14:57:39
14/05/2017

rusvesna.su

“Russian Spring” publishes the statement of the deputy commander of the DPR Army Eduard Basurin made at a traditional press briefing.

“In the run-up to the meeting of the tripartite contact group on May 15th, 2017, in Minsk the Ukrainian military-political leaders once again showed that PR in front of Europe is more important for them than the lives of civilians.

Yesterday there was very brutal provocation from Ukraine, combined with disinformation spreading.

Forces of artillery of Right Sector fighters struck a blow to the residential quarters of Avdeevka, and as a result four died and one resident of Donbass was wounded.

The Armed Forces of our Republic are accused of committing this terrorist attack by firing from the settlement Spartak, while at the same time the representatives of the OSCE SMM who arrived at the scene didn’t confirm the opening of fire from this direction, and also didn’t report the real direction of the shelling. The specified information is also not confirmed by the representative office of the Russian Armed Forces in the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination. It is stated that the Armed Forces of the DPR didn’t open fire in the direction of Avdeevka with the specified means.

As a result, us being blamed for the attack is based only on the false statement of the head of the Donetsk regional military civil authorities Zhebrivsky.

After careful studying of photo and video materials that are shown by Ukrainian media we affirm that the blow came from the settlement Vodyanoye, which is the under control of Ukraine, and where, according to our reconnaissance data, no later than the day before yesterday, four tanks, two D-30 and two self-propelled ‘Akatsiya’ artillery pieces arrived. We also earlier repeatedly noted the presence in this region of these weapons.

According to the scenario of this bloody drama, the entire event in Avdeevka had to be recorded by media and presented to the present foreign guests and the audience of ‘Eurovision’, which is held in Kiev, as atrocities committed by our Republic against civilians.

The demonstrative and widely-spread in the media information about the canceling of Poroshenko’s arrival to the competition in connection with the shelling in Avdeevka and the loss of civilians was meant to be the apotheosis of the events.

What else can it be other than a prepared-in-advance cynical action, painfully similar to the situation that developed in January of this year in the same much-suffering Avdeevka, and when again the same Poroshenko demonstratively left a meeting appointed for him in Germany.

Ukraine, having initiated a bloody provocation among civilians, once again tries to remind the world community of its existence, accusing our Republic of their own deeds and presenting in the run-up to the meeting of the contact group in Minsk the results of the latest provocation as the base of the disruption of the agreements.”

Besides this, Eduard Basurin highlighted the current situation on the fronts of the Republic.

“Over the last 24 hours the Armed Forces of Ukraine violated the ceasefire regime 61 times, 42 of which took place at night.

In the Donetsk direction 22 violations of the ceasefire regime were recorded. In the regions of the settlements Yasinovataya, Yakovlevka, Vasilyevka, Spartak, Signalnoye, Luganskoye, Dokuchaievsk, the airport region, the Kirovsky and Petrovsky districts of Donetsk 160 shells of different caliber and 511 pieces of ammunition from shoulder and automatic launchers were fired.

In the Mariupol direction 21 violations were recorded. At this time the enemy fired at the regions of the settlements Kominternovo, Zaichenko, Sosnovskoye, Oktyabr, Leninskoye, and Sakhanka 35 122-mm artillery shells, 4 tank rounds, and 119 shells of caliber 82 and 120 mm.

In the Gorlovka direction 18 violations were noted, including 8 shells of caliber 82 mm were launched on the territory of the Republic, as well as 322 grenade ammunition pieces, as a result of which two houses in the settlement of Zaitsevo on Rybalko Street were damaged.

In all directions the Ukrainian war criminals actively used small arms, and as a result the civilians of the Republic once again suffered: in the settlement Kominternovo Volkov Nikolay Dmitriyevich, born in 1991, died, and in the region of Yasinovataya Kalimullina Nina Alekseevna was wounded, born 1939.

In addition, as a result of shelling on our positions, one serviceman of the DPR Armed Forces was wounded.”