NOVANEWS
Shells hit residential house in Yasynuvata
Last month I reported on the fighting around Yasynuvata and in particular over the industrial zone:
Since that report, the fighting has continued. The NAF continues to hold the town of Yasynuvata, which is on the northern outskirts of the city of Donetsk.
As you can hear in this video shot on the 30th of May by an NAF soldier on the Yasynuvata-Gorlovka road, there are intense exchanges of small arms fire. The incoming bombardment that lands close by are 82mm mortar rounds fired by the UAF. The NAF claim that a bombardment by 152mm artillery followed the 82mm mortar bombardment.
DPR leader Alexander Zakarchenko is a frequent visitor to the ‘hot spots’ along the front line; he visited Yasynuvata at the beginning of June to see the situation himself:
In this video we again see the position on the Yasynuvata-Gorlovka highway as 82mm mortar fire is directed at it by the UAF. We see Zakarchenko in the trenches visiting the troops. Interestingly, we see a sniper using a ww2 vintage bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rife with PU scope; still a very effective weapon of course but hardly a modern one. We follow Zakarchenko as he is driven along the highway, stopping at each outpost to visit the troops, at one post he presents a young soldier wearing a Soviet era uniform with one of the new modern uniforms of the latest Russian pattern. Then we see footage shot in Yasynuvata on the 6th June and burned out civilian houses destroyed by UAF bombardments; the cameraman asks of the Ukrainians ‘why do you kill your own people, after all we are brothers. Stop this, look at the horrors of war.’ This is a sentiment I hear over and over again in similar videos shot by people in the Donbass region, clearly they are not the aggressors and it is the Kiev regime that has attacked it’s own citizens.
Yasynuvata is not the only ‘hot spot’ where there has been continual bombardments and low intensity conflict, further north at the village of Zaitsevo is another spot that has remained hot for months, with many bombardments, exchanges of fire and low intensity combat in and around the now largely destroyed village. In this video from May 15th we are given a tour of the devastated village which the defending DPR troops have nicknamed ‘Stalingrad’ due to the heavy street fighting that has been a feature of the combat in this village.
In this report from Zaitsevo by the Donbass News Agency, we see an American news crew from PBS visiting the front lines and experiencing the realities of the conflict:
TV-group from US mainstream media, PBS News, visited Zaitsevo village in Gorlovka on late Monday. Use of the white phosphorus shells by Ukrainian army was documented, soldiers of Donetsk army were interviewed and when American journalists visited Frontline positions on the outskirts of the civilian populated village, Ukrainian troops opened shelling and heavy firing with light weapons towards Donbass defense lines.
There are many more villages in the Donbass region that, while no longer on the front lines, have been destroyed by the war; leaving the remaining residents, those who were unable to flee or had nowhere else to go, living a precarious life reliant on humanitarian aid. Here we see the destroyed village of Nikishyne, now far behind the front lines but utterly devastated in the fighting earlier in the conflict:
The video follows the distribution of humanitarian aid, mostly food supplies, to the remaining civilian population, we see lines of old people patiently waiting for their portion of aid; how sad that in Europe in 2016, people are reduced to living like this, eeking out a bare existence dependent on humanitarian aid supplies to survive. The aid is given by Russian charities and we see the locals saying thankyou to those in Russia who contributed to the aid. The level of destruction seen in the video is quite shocking, clearly the bombardments must have been severe, most buildings have been damaged by artillery or rockets.
There is a great deal of bombardment being carried out by the UAF on the cities of Donetsk and Gorlovka, much of it landing on civilian housing and causing civilian casualties. There are a great number of videos showing the destruction wrought by these bombardments, here is a representative sample:
So while there are no major battles or events to report, the Donbass remains a conflict zone where soldiers on both sides continue to die; as do many civilians caught in the crossfire. It seems only a matter of time before one or more of the ‘hot spots’ that are the scene of the worst fighting since Minsk II can spread into a wider conflict.
I was unable to find any videos shot recently by UAF forces in either Yasynuvata or Zaitsevo, but I did find this report by Dmitry Tymchuk, Head of the Center for Military and Political Research, Coordinator of the Information Resistance group, Member of Parliament (People’s Front)
Russian-terrorist forces continue to grossly violate the Minsk agreements, firing at advanced Ukrainian troop positions and settlements controlled by the ATO forces. The increased frequency of shelling, including using the on-board weapons of armored vehicles and 120 mm mortars, indicates a clear trend for the escalation of tension along the demarcation line.
Along the rest of the demarcation line, occupying troops carried out fire raids using small arms, heavy machine guns, stand-mounted grenade launchers, and 82-mm mortars. Enemy snipers are at work in virtually all “hot spots” along the line, with the densest sniper fire on Ukrainian troop positions occurring in the vicinity of Luhanske, Mar’inkaandAvdiivka (the industrial zone).
VIDEO: On the night of May 29, 2016, an SMM long-range unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) spotted in “DPR”-controlled Mineralne (10km north-east of Donetsk) two self-propelled howitzers (2S3 Akatsiya, 152mm) firing four rounds in a north-western direction – in the general area of government-controlled Avdiivka (17km north of Donetsk) – after two explosions had just occurred within 200 metres of their position. The incidents constitute two violations of the Minsk Agreements, both because of the presence of heavy weapons within the withdrawal lines, and the use of such weapons.
A considerable movement of militant road transport vehicles and heavy armor has been noted near Horlivka. A convoy of two BMP-2’s and 16 army trucks proceeded towards Zaitseve; four army trucks delivered ammunition supplies to mortar positions near theHaharin and Lenin coal mines; a new mortar emplacement has been spotted near the village 6-7 area (at least two 2B9 “Vasilek” 82-mm mortars). Four MT-LB’s, one Avtokung containerized truck, and up to 50 militants arrived near Mykolaivka to reinforce the occupying troops.
