Breaking! Donbass Ceasefire - Peace-Keepers Withdraw; Shells Start Raining In Almost Immediately
We begin with Donbass. The Armed Forces of Ukraine intensified shelling of settlements near the demarcation line. In Stakhanov, this is the LPR territory, three civilians were wounded. In the city, apartment buildings were destroyed, the hospital building was damaged. In Pervomaisk and Kalinov, almost two thousand people were left without gas and electricity. A serious escalation of the conflict in the LPR is associated with the termination of the work of Russian representatives in the Joint Center for the Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire. Today, military specialists must leave the territory of Ukraine and return home.
Our special correspondent Yuliya Shustraya saw the consequences of the latest artillery shelling.
An inhabitant of Stakhanov: Here is the blood, I covered it with a cloth. Look, I covered it with a cloth. He lost a lot of blood. He didn’t feel so good.
At first, this woman’s husband didn’t believe that the shelling had begun. He thought teenagers were playing with fireworks before the New Year, but it turned out that this wasn’t the 2018 celebration but rather a return of 2015.
- Here, in the kitchen, everything is damaged, all the furniture. The windows are all broken.
The windows were broken, the furniture was damaged and the doors were squeezed out at least in 10 more high-rise buildings. We didn’t even have time to count private houses and outbuildings.
Among the injured, there're three men with fragments injuries of hands and knees, and one with an exit wound on the shoulder. One woman died of a heart attack at the beginning of the shelling. The firing hasn’t been so strong for a long time.
Andrei Marochko, LPR People's Militia official representative. "I found these fragments. As you can see, the hole is very deep. 152-mm shells were also registered here. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have now begun very massive shelling of the Luhansk People's Republic’s territory, namely the settlements where peaceful citizens live. As you saw, there are no people's militia positions here".
Not only houses suffered from the shelling. Stakhanov residents were left without light and gas because of damage to the facilities.
Social institutions were also damaged. Here, a window was smashed by a blast wave from a shell which exploded nearby. Now, you can see what’s in the room through it. These are patient files in the local polyclinic building. But doctors are unlikely to be able to help the medical cards' owners in the morning, they’ll most likely have to fix the room.
This night, many people are cleaning. Some of them are using flashlights, others are using candles. They are saying they don’t believe that shelling will stop. Although, the silence would be the best New Year's gift for the local residents.
Yuliya Shustraya, Sergey Truskov, Dmitry Matrosov, Vesti, Stakhanov.