PRESS RELEASE
Kiev Regime Caught in Lies in Southeast Ukraine
Feb. 3, 2017 (EIRNS)—The Kiev regime was caught in yet another lie, yesterday, when it claimed that it had no tanks in Avdeyevka, the village north of Donetsk where the fighting has been most intense in the past few days, even though video of the tanks had been posted to twitter by a BBC reporter in the area. Earlier in the day an official representative of the press center for Ukrainian security, Leonid Matyukhin, told Sputnik that he denied the presence of the tanks, saying that that there were no tanks in Avdiivka. This, however, was then contradicted by the monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who reported seeing four T-64 tanks behind a building in Avdeyevka, their presence being in violation of the withdrawal lines in the Minsk agreements. The OSCE monitors reported, today that they observed three T-64 tanks in Avdeyevka, as well as numerous others in other areas that were well inside the withdrawal lines.
The last two OSCE reports indicate that the amount of shooting has declined over the past two days, but is still intense. Officials of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic reported this morning heavy shelling by the regime’s troops of the Leninskoye village in the south of the self-proclaimed republic early on Friday. Late on Thursday, the Ukrainian forces opened fire at the territory of Donetsk from 152mm caliber artillery weapons and the Uragan multiple launch rocket systems, TASS further reports.
In Moscow today, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the barbaric behavior of the Kiev regime in the Donbass for putting civilians at risk. "Overnight Donetsk was heavily bombarded by the Ukrainian military," she said.
"The city’s residential areas were shelled dozens of times with heavy guns as well as Uragan and Grad multiple rocket launchers. As a result, several civilians were killed and many, particularly children, suffered wounds, much damage was inflicted,"
Zakharova added.
"This barbaric attack cannot be justified, Kiev has violated not only the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, dated August 12, 1949, but also trampled upon all moral norms,"
she went on to say. "Only barbarians can bombard a sleeping city and kill innocent people, we have no other name for those who carried out this attack."
In Brussels, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg denied the reality acknowledged by most international institutions and called on Russia to use its "considerable influence" to end fighting in eastern Ukraine. "We call for an immediate return to the ceasefire," Stoltenberg said. "We call on Russia to use its considerable influence over the separatists to bring the violence to an end."
Russia’s mission to NATO responded that NATO, instead has to put pressure on the regime in Kiev to end its escalation. "By urging Russia to use its influence on the militias, NATO continues to ignore the real facts. How about calls upon Kiev for ending its offensive operations in Donbass and giving up the idea of a military solution of the conflict," the statement says, reports TASS. The Russian mission said that "NATO’s strong political and practical support that continues to be promised to Ukraine merely encourages the party of warmongers."
