Ukraine Day 1020: LIVE UPDATES BELOW.
Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here.
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An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine
Six Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in battle , Col. Andriy Lysenko, Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman reported today at his briefing, UACrisis reported.
He said attacks were made on Stanitsa Luganskaya, a town where an OSCE-brokered effort to separate combatants and get forces to withdrawn has been repeatedly delayed. There were also attacks in the areas of Novoaydarskoye and Popasnyaya and the towns of Slavyanoserbsk, Novotoshkovskoye outside Popasnyaya were also shelled. Schastye and Zolotoye were quiet for a change.
On the Donetsk line Opytnoye and Peski were quiet, but there were 4 heavy firefights near Avdeyevka. Militants attacked the areas around Gorlovka, but Mayorsk and Zaytseva were quiet. There was heavy shelling at the Svetlodarsk Bulge and the Butovka coal mine as well as the Avdeyevka industrial zone.
On the Mariupol line, there was artillery or mortar fire on Berdyanskoye, Talakovka, Vodyanoye and Shirokino and firearms were used on Svernyoye, Maryinka and Bogdanovka, where there were also snipers.
He said attacks were made on Stanitsa Luganskaya, a town where an OSCE-brokered effort to separate combatants and get forces to withdrawn has been repeatedly delayed. There were also attacks in the areas of Novoaydarskoye and Popasnyaya and the towns of Slavyanoserbsk, Novotoshkovskoye outside Popasnyaya were also shelled. Schastye and Zolotoye were quiet for a change.
On the Donestk line Opytnoye and Peski were quiet, but there were 4 heavy firefights near Avdeyevka. Militants attacked the areas around Gorlovka, but Mayorsk and Zaytseva were quiet. There was heavy shelling at the Svetlodarsk Bulge and the Butovka coal mine as well as the Avdeyevka industrial zone.
On the Mariupol line, there was artillery or mortar fire on Berdyanskoye, Talakovka, Vodyanoye and Shirokino and firearms were used on Svernyoye, Maryinka and Bogdanovka, where there were also snipers.
At 18:00, the ATO [Anti-Terrorist Operation] reported that Russia-backed forces had attacked Ukrainian positions 17 times, were concentrating their fire on the Lugansk line 11 of those times, attacking Novaleksandrovka, Krymskoye and Novozvanovka with 120-mm artillery, grenade-launchers, armed BTRs and other firearms.
On the Mariupol line, militants attacked Shirokino with 82-mm mortars, Maryinka with grenade-launchers and Gnutovo with small arms.
On the Donetsk line, the militants fired on Zaytsevo with grenade-launchers and used a BTR to shell Nizhneyey Lozovoye.
According to a TSN report, Ukrainian soldiers have moved their position from the village of Luganskoye, constantly under fire from Russia-backed militants, to the fields to draw the shelling away, Gordonua.com reports. They are living in dugouts and keeping warm by burning firewood. The Ukrainian forces are using the rare Maksim machine-gun when militants approach, usually at dark.
As Dmitry Zaks of AFP reported:
The rebel-run parts of Lugansk receive about a fifth of their water from Kiev-controlled portions of Ukraine and occasional humanitarian assistance from Russia.
But the two Ukrainian companies that had been supplying the water for free throughout most of the fighting have been forced to cut off supplies because they could no longer pay their own electricity bills.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced on October 5 that it would step in to pay Lugansk’s debt to Ukraine on an emergency basis.
But the ICRC also called it “a stop-gap measure, not a sustainable solution”.
The official news agency of the Lugansk insurgents said parts of the region had stopped receiving water from the Kiev-controlled part of the splintered country on Thursday.
Kiev has also threatened to cut off the region’s electricity if the Lugansk rebel authorities do not cover outstanding bills in the coming days.
Such social disputes are supposed to be worked out at periodic talks the sides hold in the Belarusian capital Minsk.
But a Tuesday meeting between the foreign ministers of France and Germany — the cosponsors of the Ukrainian peace process — ended in yet another stalemate.
o Tuka Says Voting in Donbass Will Be Illegal
In an interview with Gordonua.com, Georgiy Tuka, Ukraine’s deputy minister on issues of the temporarily occupied territories (in the Donbass) said that any ballot held in the territories in the Donbass controlled by Russia-backed forces would be “unlawful,” as there is no legislation for it. He said any such effort would be “consultative” in nature only and not obligatory for Kiev to heed.
Tuka conceded that Kiev is “losing the information war” and cliches regarding the “bloody Banderaites” and the separatists have been hard to dispel, blaming the Samopomich party in particular for this.
Under the Minsk accords, Ukraine was obliged to pass a law on “the special status of certain districts of Donetsk and Lugansk Regions”. In August 2016, the Ukrainian parliament passed in the first reading a draft law on changes to the constitution providing for a “specific procedure” to implement local self-government in the designated areas of Donetsk and Lugansk Regions. But Ukrainian authorities have stated repeatedly that the law cannot work while Russian forces remain in Ukraine.
— Catherine A. Fitzpatrick