Inspectors say situation grows tense on contact line in southeast Ukraine

Residential building destroyed in a shelling attack in the village of Gorlovka (archive)

MOSCOW, May 14. /TASS/. The Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) overseeing ceasefire implementation in the troubled southeastern part of Ukraine, commonly known as Donbas, reported escalation of tensions on the contact line between the conflicting parties, the Donetsk news agency reported on Thursday.

"On the average scale we are registering about 80 violations [of ceasefire] per day," Colonel Alexander Kucherenko, a spokesman for the JCCC, told the news agency. "The situation is very edgy as new hotbeds of tension emerge, including in the village of Gorlovka.

The spokesman said that the tense situation remained in the village of Shirokino, near the city of Mariupol, adding that "we can hear the gunfire at the moment in Shirokino."

The Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic reported earlier in the day that the Ukrainian forces violated the ceasefire regime 43 times over the last 24 hours, shelling 12 settlements in the self-proclaimed territory.

"[Ukrainian forces] shelled the settlements of Krasny Oktyabr, Zaychenko, Shirokino, Zheleznaya Balka, Grigorovka, Spartak, Kalinovka, Novaya Maryevka, Zhabichevo, along with the territory of the Volvo Center, airport and Oktyabrskaya mine in Donetsk," the DPR defense ministry said.

The ceasefire between the Ukrainian conflicting sides started from midnight on February 15. The ceasefire regime is stipulated in a package of measures for the implementation of the accords signed in Minsk on February 12.

The Lugansk and Donetsk regions proclaimed the establishment of the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics after local referendums in May last year. The LPR and DPR later signed an agreement on uniting the regions into the Novorossiya Union of People’s Republics.

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