Renewed attacks in eastern Ukraine
Russia reports 40,000 Donbass refugees
02/20/2022, 09:50 am
According to international observers, ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine continue to increase. The separatists report shelling again. The Red Cross is pushing for the protection of civilians. People are apparently already leaving the trouble spot in droves.
According to its own statements, Russia has taken in tens of thousands of refugees from the neighboring country in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. According to the state agency TASS, Civil Protection Minister Alexander Chupriyan spoke of more than 40,000 people who had arrived in the Rostov region in the south of the country. They have therefore been housed in 92 emergency shelters. The information cannot be independently verified.
Against the background of the deteriorating situation, the separatist leadership called for people to flee on Friday and justified the appeal with an imminent attack by Ukrainian government troops. Ukrainian government officials and the military have repeatedly emphasized that they are not planning any offensive against the region.
According to earlier information from the separatists, a total of 700,000 people were to be brought to safety from the Donetsk region. Buses and trains were ready. Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed the government in Moscow to pay the refugees 10,000 rubles (around 116 euros) per person, among other things.
Villages under attack
Meanwhile, there were new attacks in the conflict area in eastern Ukraine during the night. The insurgents in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions announced in the morning that villages had been shelled several times since midnight. The Ukrainian army also listed several violations of the current ceasefire in the morning. The respective data could not be verified independently. Nothing was initially known about victims. The military had already spoken of two soldiers killed on Saturday.
According to international observers, the number of ceasefire violations is rising massively. In the Luhansk region, 975 violations were found, including 860 explosions, according to a statement from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe at night. 591 violations were reported for the Donetsk region, including 535 explosions. These figures referred to the situation on Friday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) also complained that at least two pumping stations in the Donetsk region had failed due to shelling in the past few days. These supplied more than a million people with drinking water. “We are very concerned about developments in eastern Ukraine,” said Florence Gillette, head of the ICRC delegation in Ukraine. She appealed to the protection of the population during military operations.
In the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, not far from the Russian border, government troops equipped by the West have been fighting Russian-backed separatists since 2014. According to UN estimates, more than 14,000 people have already been killed, mostly in the separatist area. A peace plan from 2015 mediated by Franco-German mediation is not implemented.