Ukraine Day 827: LIVE UPDATES BELOW.
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
UPDATE
The journalist beaten is not from Hromadske TV in Kiev, but from another outlet called similarly HromadskeZP in Zaporozhe which is independent.
The word hromadske in Ukrainian means “public”.
Anatoly Ostapenko, a journalist for Hromadske TV in the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhe, said unknown men in masks attacked him near his home this evening, May 24, Hromadske reported.
He said three assailants were waiting for him in a car with tinted windows and without license plates. They got out of the car, pushed him to the ground and then kicked him. Then they got back in the car and fled the scene. They didn’t take any valuables.
Ostapenko believes the attack was related to his work as a journalist, as recently he was investigating allegations of corruption among several officials in Zaporozhe and the region.
Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media, condemned the attack and urged investigation of this obstruction of the press in Ukraine along with other recent cases.
Ukraine has suffered its worst combat casualties in a year, with seven servicemen killed and nine wounded yesterday.
Oleksandr Turchynov, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) said today that the responsibility for the bloodshed lay with the Russian political and military leadership “which is systematically and consistently torpedoing the peaceful path to the resolution of the conflict and the liberation of the occupied territories.”
Many of the casualties were suffered in Avdeyevka, northeast of Donetsk.
Zerkalo Nedeli reported just after midnight that two Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and eight wounded after Russian-backed fighters shelled their positions in the Avdeyevka industrial park with 120 and 82 mm mortars.
Maksim Ryabokon, coordinator of the People’s Project volunteer center, wrote on his Facebook page this morning that the troops were members of the 90th battalion of the 81st Airmobile Brigade.
In addition, the Aidar volunteer battalion announced yesterday evening that two of their longest-serving members, Mykola Kulyba and Baula had been killed by a mine.
According to this morning’s ATO Press Center report, Russian-backed fighters carried out 47 attacks yesterday across the front line.
Fighting has intensified to the west of Donetsk over the last two days, with the military reporting that Russian-backed fighters yesterday shelled Ukrainian positions near both Maryinka and Krasnogorovka with mortars.
To the south, Ukrainian positions near Beryozovoye, on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway, as well as Gnutovo, Pavlopol and Shirokino, nearer the port city, were attacked with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and anti-aircraft artillery. Even closer to Mariupol, the military reports that the village of Lebedinskoye was shelled with 120 mm mortars.
Meanwhile to the east of Donetsk, there was further fighting around separatist-held Gorlovka, with Ukrainian positions near Zaytsevo and Luganskoye coming under small-arms and grenade-launcher fire.
In the Lugansk region, military press officer Volodymyr Korniyaka reported three attacks yesterday.
According to Korniyaka, Ukrainian positions near Novozvanovka were attacked over the course of an hour with grenade launchers and machine guns, and then letter came under fire from BMP infantry fighting vehicle cannons. Russian-backed fighters also fired briefly on Ukrainian troops outside Stanitsa Luganskaya.
— Pierre Vaux