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An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine
The Ukrainian military reports that Russian-backed fighters conducted 37 attacks in the Donbass yesterday, wounding two Ukrainian soldiers.
According to this morning’s ATO Press Center report, Russian-backed fighters used 120 mm mortars, grenade launchers and anti-aircraft artillery in attacks on positions near Novotroitskoye, Beryozovoye and Taramchuk, on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway.
Just outside the port city of Mariupol, grenade launchers and heavy machine guns were used against positions near the village of Talakovka.
In the Donetsk area, the military claims that residential areas of Krasnogorovka, west of the city, came under tank fire, while positions in Maryinka, just to the south, were attacked with machine guns and grenade launchers.
Eduard Basurin, deputy commander of the armed forces of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), claimed meanwhile that Ukrainian troops had themselves shelled Krasnogorovka with 152 mm artillery, apparently as a provocation.
To the north of the city, grenade-launcher and machine-gun attacks were reported near Avdeyevka and Troitskoye, as well as Novgorodskoye and Zaytsevo, near Gorlovka. To the east of the separatist-held town, positions near Luganskoye came under fire from BMP infantry fighting vehicles, heavy mortars and snipers.
In turn, the DNR claimed that Ukrainian forces had fired 194 shells at separatist-held areas over 24 hours.
According to the Russian-backed separatists, the bodies of two of their fighters were recovered near Gorlovka.
— Pierre Vaux