Ukrainian army violates ceasefire 24 times in 24 hours

The Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) have violated the ceasefire agreement, shelling the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) 24 times over the past 24 hours, head of the DPR group in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire (JCCC) Ruslan Yakubov said on Saturday.

"The total number of violations made by the Ukrainian Armed Forces over the past day is 24," the Donetsk News Agency quoted Yakubov as saying. "The total number of used ammunitions is 86," he said.

According to Yakubov, Ukrainian forces targeted the Spartak village in the northern part of Donetsk, the settlements of Aleksandrovka, Staromikhailovka, Yasinovataya, and the villages of Krutaya Balka, Yakovlevka, Zhabichevo in the northern part of the city, Gorlovka’s mine settlements of Gagarina and Izotova, Zaitsevo, as well as the villages of Novaya Tavriya, Leninskoye, Kominternovo, Sakhanka in the southern part of the republic. The Ukrainian Armed Forces used mortar launchers, infantry fighting vehicles, armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and small arms.

The so-called "back-to-school" ceasefire was agreed by the participants of the Contact Group on resolving the situation in southeastern Ukraine at a meeting in Minsk and took effect on the midnight of August 29. But only three hours after that, the Ukrainian military shelled the outskirts of Gorlovka, as was reported by the DPR.

The sides have agreed to ceasefires more than 20 times since the start of the Donbass conflict, with the most successful ceasefire seen in 2016, which lasted six weeks.