Ukraine Day 1031: LIVE UPDATES BELOW.
There were no Ukrainian military casualties in the last 24 hours.
Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here.
- READ OUR SPECIAL REPORT:
An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine
Four Ukrainian soldiers and a border guard were wounded yesterday, as Kiev reports heavy shelling in the south.
Colonel Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, told reporters today that three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded by enemy fire yesterday.
In addition, an officer of the State Border Service (DPSU) suffered light injuries after a checkpoint outside Stanitsa Luganskaya, northeast of the occupied city of Lugansk, was attacked at around midnight.
According to this morning’s report from the Ukrainian military, Russia-backed forces conducted 15 attacks yesterday.
In the south, near Mariupol, Ukrainian positions outside the village of Berdyanskoye were reportedly shelled with 152 mm artillery, while those in neighboring Shirokino were hit with 122 mm shells.
The military also reports that positions near the village of Talakovka were attacked with grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms.
In the Donetsk area, the military reports grenade-launcher and machine-gun attacks on Maryinka, to the west of the city, and Avdeyevka and Verkhnetoretskoye, to the northeast.
Further fighting in this area was reported this afternoon:
Moving northeast along the front line, Ukrainian positions in Luganskoye, on the highway between Bakhmut (formerly Artyomovsk) and occupied Debaltsevo, were reportedly shelled with 82 mm mortars.
In the Lugansk region, the village of Krymskoye was, the report claims, shelled with 120 and 82 mm mortars, while positions near Stanitsa Luganskaya were attacked with grenade launchers and small arms.
Meanwhile, the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk reported today that one of their fighters had been killed by Ukrainian fire.
Eduard Basurin, military spokesman for the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), claimed today that Ukrainian forces had fired on separatist-held territory 864 times over 24 hours, launching 288 mortar rounds.
— Pierre Vaux
The Donetsk regional police report that a civilian man has been injured by a shell blast in government-controlled Maryinka.
According to the police, a single shell exploded on Prokofiev (formerly Lenin) Street in the centre of the town, west of the occupied city of Donetsk.
At 11:40 today, the police received a report from medics that a civilian male, born in 1954, had been taken to hospital with shrapnel injuries.
— Pierre Vaux
At least one civilian has been killed and another wounded after an attack on a queue at a front-line checkpoint north of Gorlovka.
According to the Ukrainian State Border Service (DPSU), Russia-backed fighters opened fire on a queue of people waiting to cross the front line at around 9 am today, using small arms.
One man received fatal head injuries while another was shot in the shoulder.
At the time of the attack, they had been about 50 meters away from the DPSU checkpoint outside the village of Mayorsk.
Colonel Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, said this afternoon:
“These people were headed from occupied territory into free Ukraine, that is why the militants shot them in the back.”
In turn, the Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk have themselves accused Ukrainian servicemen of carrying out the attack.
The pro-separatist Donetsk News Agency (DAN) cites a source in the security forces of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) as saying that Ukrainian border guards had opened fire while checking bus passengers’ documents.
According to a later DNR announcement, a second person died after suffering a heart attack and two people were injured.
— Pierre Vaux