According to the Ukrainian army, shells fell on the city of Stanytsia Louhanska. Kiev reports violations of the ceasefire by separatists during the night, while the Prorussian rebels reported shots of the Ukrainian army.
Le Monde with AFP.
The donbass knows new tensions. Bombing, Friday, February 18, near Stanytsia Louhanska, a city in the eastern Ukraine under the control of government forces, found journalists from the France-Press agency (AFP). The Ukrainian army and Prorussian separatists accuse mutually to use heavy weapons, a renewed violence that nourishes fears of Russian invasion.
The sound of the shells was audible in this locality already affected the day before by bombing which have damaged a kindergarten. According to the Ukrainian army, thirty-two shells fell on Stanytsia Louhanska, depriving it in part of electricity.
The Ukrainian authorities reported twenty violations of the ceasefire by separatists during the night, while the Prorussian rebels reported twenty-seven shots of the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian forces have been facing, for eight years, Prorussian separatists. The two camps rejected the responsibility of the clashes.
Russia accused of looking for a pretext to attack
The dialogue of deaf continuing himself between the United States, which now fear an attack on Ukraine “in the coming days, and Russia sweeping these accusations. Russian President Vladimir Putin must receive his Belarusian ally, Alexander Loukachenko, with whom extensive joint military exercises are in progress. Saturday, the Kremlin Master must supervise the maneuvers of his “strategic forces”, including ballistic and cruising missile tests.
Russia has said new withdrawals from the Ukrainian border, information that leave Kiev and Westerners skeptics. “It does not take place,” said Friday, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, Oleksi Reznikov, according to which Russia has massaged 149,000 soldiers on the Ukrainian border.
Americans and British have accused Russia to look for a pretext to attack – the conflict between Ukraine and prerogatives on its territory could become one. Russia has also tried “very worrying” the clashes between Kiev forces and Prorussian separatists.
For its part, Ukraine has indicated that it had “not intent” to carry out offensive actions against the separatist territories of the Eastern country or the Annexed Peninsula of Crimea, announced the Minister of Defense Ukrainian, Oleksi Reznikov, Friday. “We are strengthening our Defense. But we do not intend to conduct any offensive” against these territories, he said at a session in Parliament, while Russia accuses Ukraine to prepare a attack against these areas.
Peace agreements signed in 2015 in Minsk had allowed the establishment of a ceasefire and a considerable decline in clashes, but sporadic violence still burst regularly on the front line.