Contents tagged with ATO

  • Participants of the Donbas blockade threaten to destroy main roads if there are attempts to disperse them

    Participants of the railway blockade in the Luhansk region said they will turn to alternative tactics if they are dispersed, Ukrainskaya Pravda reported.

    "Volunteers’ information about the reassignment of special units towards Bohdan Redoubt for the violent dispersal of Veterans of the War of Independence has been pre-confirmed,” reported the "staff of trade blockade" on Facebook.

    "The staff of trade blockade says that in case of scenario of violent dispersal of protesters, it will have to …

  • Ukrainian veterans blockade the areas of the Donbas that are beyond control of Ukraine

    On January 25th, Ukrainian veterans began the third stage of blocking trade with the territories that are beyond the control of the Ukrainian government in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The first stage was preparatory, and the second was an information gathering stage. The third stage is a direct blockade of trucks and trains that will move to the temporarily uncontrolled territories in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The initiators of the blockade are the Donbas and Aidar volunteer …

  • Russia demands that Ukraine extradite a detained Georgian officer

    Russia wants Ukraine to extradite a Georgian volunteer, Gia Tsertsvadze, who participated in the war in the Donbas. He was detained at Kyiv's Zhulyany Airport on January 15 while trying to leave Ukraine.

    Tsertsvadze was told he was on Interpol’s international most wanted persons list. The manhunt was initiated by Russia, who is accusing him of a murder in the territory of the Russian Federation in 2003. Kyiv court chose a 40-day arrest as a preventive punishment for Tsertsvadze and put him in …

  • Veterans of Ukrainian war block railway traffic to separatist-held territories

    According to the Deputy of Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) and former commander of the Donbas volunteer battalion, Semen Semenchenko, veterans of the Ukrainian war have blocked the passage of trains to separatist-held territories, as stated in his Facebook post.

    “12 cargo trains with more than 700 rail containers have been taken out of the process of financing the terrorism. Servicemen of the Interior Ministry, servicemen of the Border guard service, SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] …

  • Ukrainian forces advanced 20 kilometers towards Debaltseve over the last year

    During the last year, the soldiers of the 54th separate mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces and the contract soldiers of the Podolyanina Wolves special forces unit of the Pravy Sector, which is a part of the Ukrainian military, who are deployed along the Svitlodarsk Salient, advanced by  almost 20 kilometers towards Debaltseve.

    The information has been confirmed by the Ukrainian volunteer activist Yuriy Mysyagin on his Facebook page.

    “Our positions on Svitlodarsk Salient are …

  • Ukrainian headquarters: The presence of our troops at the Svitlodarsk salient does not violate the Minsk agreements

    New positions that the Armed Forces of Ukraine took and held in the Svitlodarsk salient in the Donetsk region do not violate the Minsk agreements, according to a brief on January 11 by the spokesperson of the Ministry of Defense, Colonel Oleksandr Motuzyanyk.

    The Colonel reminded the press that fighting intensified recently on this stretch of a front line. "As you know, the situation there has been very tense in recent months. Very severe fighting continued there that resulted in units of the …

  • Ukrainian military: Toretsk is on the verge of humanitarian catastrophe because of separatists

    Due to a damaged water line, Toretsk is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe, however, the separatists cannot guarantee the security of Ukrainian public utilities workers needed to start the repairs, as reported on Sunday by the press center of the Ukrainian armed forces.

    They indicated that as a result of shelling that took place on 23 November, a water supply line connecting of Horlivka and Toretsk was hit and damaged. Since then, the water supply to the city of Toretsk and neighboring …

  • OSCE: The situation in the Donbas has worsened

    The number of bombings and shootings in the Donbas is now the highest since the beginning of the year, according to the Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) of the OSCE.

    “Last week the amount of ceasefire violations documented by the OSCE-SMM was 160% greater than what had been documented before. It is the largest number of attacks since the beginning of the year,” said the principal deputy chief monitor of the OSCE-SMM to Ukraine, Alexander Hug, at a briefing, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

    He also …

  • The OSCE warned about the possibility of separatists attacking Mariupol

    During a meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienn, the US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Daniel Baer, discussed the possibility of separatist forces attacking Mariupol and its surrounding area, UNIAN reports.

    “We are still seriously concerned with the buildup of forces of the joined Russian and separatist troops outside of Mariupol," Baer said. He reported that on November 14th Russian-separatist forces blocked access to the observers of the OSCE …

  • Ukraine has relocated checkpoints in order to pull six settlements out of the grey zone

    On Friday, in the Donetsk region, a new entry/exit checkpoint, Mayorsk, was opened. It will replace the Zaytseve checkpoint which was operating along the Horlivka-Artemivsk corridor.

    The decision to relocate the Zaytseve checkpoint closer to the boundary was made two weeks earlier, as reported on the website of the State Border Service of Ukraine.

    "The new location of the checkpoint will bring towns such as Zaytseve, Mayorsk, Kurdyumivka, Otradivka, Mykolaivka, and Kodema out of the grey zone, …