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- READ OUR SPECIAL REPORT: An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine
The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has posted a statement today that the president supports revoking citizenship for those who support separatism:
“As President, I believe that the country should have this instrument at its disposal in war conditions. I would like people’s deputies to support this petition,” Petro Poroshenko said answering the questions of journalists in the course of his visit to State Enterprise “Polygraph Combine “Ukraine”.
The President informed that he had forwarded the petition to the Parliament.
Answering respective e-petition submitted by I.M. Lazavenko, the President noted:
“Thank you for active civil stand. I share your opinion regarding the inevitability of strict punishment for persons who commit crimes against foundations of national state security.
Provisions of the Constitution of Ukraine and regulations in the area of citizenship are based on the principles and regulations of generally recognized international documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Nationality and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.
Analysis of the current legislation on citizenship and the Criminal Code of Ukraine indicates a lack of legal grounds for the revocation of citizenship for committing an infringement on the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine.
At the same time, I addressed the Cabinet of Ministers with a proposal to elaborate the given issue taking into account the world experience”.
The central goal of the Minsk agreements is to end the fighting and take other steps necessary to restore normalcy to the Donbass, an area which Minsk states is still part of Ukraine. This move might certainly make for good politics, but it may make ultimate reconciliation with regions of eastern Ukraine which are under control by Russian-backed separatists.
— James Miller
The Ukrainian military claims that Russian-backed forces conducted 25 attacks last night, mostly in the Donetsk area.
According to the ATO Press Centre, the Donetsk suburb of Krasnogorovka, west of the separatist-held city, was once again subjected to heavy bombardment.
The settlement was reportedly shelled seven times with 82 mm mortars.
Elsewhere in the Donetsk area, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms were used in attacks on Opytnoye, Avdeyevka, Marinka and Peski.
There were also several reported attacks in the Gorlovka area.
According to the report, the village of Mayorsk, north of the separatist-held town, was attacked with grenade launchers and small arms while neighbouring Zaytsevo saw grenade launcher and sniper attacks. Small-arms fire was reported in Novogorodskoye, to the west, and heavy machine gun fire on Luganskoye, to the east.
At noon today, Colonel Andriy Lysenko, military spokesman for the Presidential Administration, told reporters that two Ukrainian troops had been wounded as a result of the attacks on Zaytsevo and Mayorsk.
Lysenko also reported small arms fire near Svetlodarsk, just west of Luganskoye:
Meanwhile the separatist Lugansk Information Centre cited Igor Yashenko, deputy chief of staff of the ‘People’s Militia’ of the self-declared Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR), as saying that Ukrainian troops had shelled LNR positions outside the village of Kalinovka, south of Luganskoye.
According to Yashenko, Ukrainian troops fired 15 cannon rounds from BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles near Luganskoye.
On the Azov coast, Ukraine’s Colonel Lysenko said that there had been attacks by Russian-backed fighters near the village of Shirokino, east of Mariupol: