A Facebook page posting reports from Russian-backed fighters that carries the name of Igor Girkin, the former Russian intelligence officer who led the military operation in Slavyansk, has posted a claim that Russian-backed fighters now control the majority of Marinka.
According to a group on the Russian social media VKontakte called “Svodki Novorossii” (Novorossiya Dispatches, formerly called “Strelkov’s Dispatches”), Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov visited Donetsk to berate the leaders of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR), dialog.ua reported.
Donetsk news site 62.ua reports that Aleksandr Poronyuk, chief of the ATO Press Centre, has announced that Russian-backed fighters have begun a second wave of attacks on Ukrainian positions in Marinka.
Reuters reports that two mines in the Donetsk region, Zasyadko and Skochinsky, have both had their power cut by heavy shelling. While the Russian-backed separatists said that they were evacuating 350 trapped miners in Skochinsky, they also report that 576 miners are trapped without light in the Zasyadko mine.
Mashable’s Christopher Miller has this important report:
RFE/RL provides a summary of statements from both Ukrainian and separatist leaders, both of whom report major fighting around Marinka (Maryinka), south-west of Donetsk:
Ukrainska Pravda reports that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the Ukrainian prime minister, has claimed that Russia gave the order for their proxy forces in Donetsk to launch today’s offensive as a challenge to world leaders meeting on June 7 for the G7 summit in Germany.
There are reports this morning that, as Russian-backed forces mount heavy attacks around the city of Donetsk, there is a wider escalation in attacks elsewhere on the front lines.
Donetsk awoke in the early hours of this morning to intense artillery and Grad rocket fire as Russian-backed forces launched a major new offensive, assaulting both to the north of the separatist-held city, striking Avdeyevka, and to the south-west, pounding Marinka and shelling Ukrainian positions on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway.
The frenzied world-wide front is expanding Mercy to no one, no one, no one! Stanza from 1989 Russian anarchists’ song Vintovka – eto prazdnik (The Rifle is a Holiday) By the Russian punk bank Grazhdanskaya Oborona (Civil Defense) The annexation of Crimea, the “Novorossiya” project, and the fight against the “Kyiv junta” are not supported […]
