Ukraine Day 1201: LIVE UPDATES BELOW.
Yesterday’s coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here.
An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine
On one hand, Ukraine has something to celebrate this week, as Thursday marked the second time in a week that the Ukrainian military suffered no casualties. On the other hand, this is largely chance, since there are still a large amount of ceasefire violations reported each day.
Despite a new ceasefire which was supposed to go into effect on June 1, the Ukrainian military reported 18 ceasefire violations over the previous 24 hour period at their morning briefing on Friday, June 2. Unian.info reports:
The largest number of violations was recorded in the Mariupol sector, namely there were 18 militant attacks. In the evening, the Ukrainian fortified positions near the villages of Shyrokyne, Vodiane, Chermalyk, and Talakivka came under fire from grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms. At about 21:00 Kyiv time, the militants started firing 82mm mortars on the Ukrainian fortified positions near the town of Maryinka. In addition, enemy snipers were active in that direction after dark.
Russian proxies attack Ukraine 28 times in last day despite June 1 truce
Russia's hybrid military forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in Donbas 28 times in the past 24 hours despite a new agreement on a truce as of June 1; no casualties were reported, according to the press service of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) Headquarters.
Ukrainian Colonel Andrey Lysenko reported that Ukraie was redeploying the 93rd brigade, he insisted that this was not a violation of the Minsk accords. The Ukraine Crisis Media Center reports:
“Considering the fact of permanent attacks at areas where Ukrainian troops locate, including observation points and strongholds, command of brigades deployed near the contact line regularly takes decisions to move observation points and strongholds. It is done to secure the troops’ lives and improve the position in terms of engineering arrangements, as the enemy adjusts fire from time to time. […] I do emphasize that no active offense or contact line crossing takes place. Ukraine is strictly observing the Minsk agreements.”
— James Miller