As fighting in east escalates, confusion over number of casualties

There was a notable escalation in attacks on Ukrainian forces on June 8, according to Ukrainian military spokesman Serhiy Zhmurko. He said Russian-backed forces had attacked Ukrainian positions 43 times on that day alone, both in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. He said the Kremlin-backed forces were trying to provoke Ukrainian soldiers into returning fire.

On the next day, June 9, massive mortar attacks were launched from the occupied city of Donetsk, Zhmurko said. He said the Russian-backed fighters had used heavy mortars, banned by the Minsk agreements, with the most intensive attacks coming after noon on June 9.

However, according to the Ukrainian military the situation in war zone, while tense, is under its control. This is despite what it called “an activation” of Russian forces in almost every combat zone in eastern Ukraine, including hotspots of fighting near the cities of Mariupol, Luhansk, and Donetsk.

The town under most intensive fire from the Russian-backed fighters is Avdiivka, located just to the north of the city of Donetsk. People’s Front lawmaker Yevhen Deidei on June 8 said on his Facebook page that the fighters had shelled residential areas and almost every Ukrainian military position in the town. He said the Russian-back fighters had used large-caliber mortars, self-propelled artillery, and tanks in their attacks.

There have been conflicting reports on the number of Ukrainian soldiers killed and wounded in the fighting.

Deidei on June 12 claimed in a Facebook post that four soldiers had been killed and 13 wounded in fighting near Avdiivka. However, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense later denied this, claiming that no Ukrainian soldiers had died, although 10 had been wounded.

Deidei hit back, saying: “If the employees of the Ministry of Defense did not yet fully understand what is actually happening in the east of Ukraine, I repeat especially for them, and probably for the millionth time — this is war! Aggressive, ruthless, and brutal…”

Adding to the confusion, a volunteer medic, Yana Zinkevych, reported on Facebook on June 12 that four members of the Right Sector Volunteer Corps had been killed in a shelling attack at the Butovka mine south of Avdiivka, according to a report by the Interpreter, an online publication that covers the Ukrainian crisis. Speaking on June 13, Colonel Andriy Lysenko, the military spokesman for the Presidential Administration, said an investigation was ongoing into the “unauthorized presence” of “people not connected to the armed forces of Ukraine.” He said that according to official information, only three soldiers had been wounded in the shelling attack, and none killed.

Meanwhile, over the weekend Russian fighters were reported to have shelled the Ukrainian checkpoint in Maiorsk, to the north-west of the occupied town of Horlivka. Reporting the incident, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine said on its official website that “there were no casualties among the border guards.”

“Ukrainian servicemen did not open fire in response,” it added.

In a separate incident a Ukrainian civilian died shortly after midnight on June 13 when Russian-backed fighters shelled the village of Zalizne, (formerly called Artemove), near Horlivka. The 84-year-old woman was killed when a shell struck her house, the National Police of Donetsk Oblast reported.

“An investigative team is working at the scene of the incident, and information about casualties and damage will be clarified,” the police said in a statement.