Ukraine Day 1068: LIVE UPDATES BELOW.
Yesterday’s live coverage of the Ukraine conflict can be found here.
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An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine
The Ukrainian military reports a reduced number of attacks yesterday, though shelling continued in the Lugansk region.
According to Colonel Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, the Ukrainian armed forces suffered no casualties yesterday.
Earlier this morning, the Ukrainian military reported 19 attacks by Russia-backed forces over the course of yesterday.
The Lugansk region was the only area to see the use of heavy weaponry, the military claims, with positions near the village of Krymskoye shelled with 120-mm mortars.
Further west in the region, positions near the regular hot spot of Novozvanovka were attacked with grenade launchers.
Grenade-launcher and small-arms attacks were reported across much of the remainder of the front line, particularly near Mariupol and to the north of both Gorlovka and Donetsk.
But Russia-backed separatists claimed that a civilian was wounded by Ukrainian fire today.
Igor Syakerin, the separatist-backed head of the administration in the village of Yelenovka, southwest of Donetsk, said that Ukrainian forces had opened fire near the village at around 6:30 (Kiev time) this morning.
One civilian woman, travelling by bus from Donetsk to Dokuchaevsk, near the front line on the Donetsk-Mariupol highway, was, he claimed, wounded by shrapnel.
Russia’s LifeNews ran a report with an interview with the bus driver, who showed the camera crew what he said were bullet holes in the side of his bus, one of which went through to the inside and had, he claimed, sent a shard of metal into the passenger’s leg.
Translation: The driver of the bus on the mysterious bullet fragment in the middle of Yelenovka. To me, it doesn’t look much like a bullet hole.
The Roshen confectionery company, owned by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko, has announced that it is to close its only factory in Russia.
Reuters reports:
The Lipetsk plant in western Russia has seen production decline since March 2014 when Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and pro-Russian rebels rose up in eastern Ukraine. It has experienced raids by armed police and was hit by a freeze on its assets in April 2015.
Roshen said output had fallen threefold since 2013, blaming Russian restrictions on its imports from Ukraine and “active anti-Ukrainian propaganda in the Russian media.”
The production decline has caused the plant’s workforce to shrink to 700 from 1,900 and Roshen now plans to end production.
“A total halt (in production) and mothballing is planned for April 2017,” it said in an emailed statement. “This decision was taken on political and economic grounds.”
Ukrainian leader's confectionery firm to close Russian factory
KIEV Ukraine's largest confectionery company, owned by President Petro Poroshenko, plans to close its only factory in Russia, saying it had become impossible to do business there because of trade restrictions and anti-Ukrainian sentiment. The Lipetsk plant in western Russia has seen production decline since March 2014 when Moscow annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and pro-Russian rebels rose up in eastern Ukraine.