In eastern Ukraine, fighting flare up

Dozens of people were killed or injured during the ongoing heavy fighting near the Donetsk airport. At the same time, hostilities intensified along the entire line of separation between the Ukrainian authorities and the separatists.

The parties blame each other for crimes against civilians.

Shelling in several areas in the east of Donetsk and Lugansk regions is reported, and one of the local hospitals suffered in Donetsk.

At the same time, the Ukrainian armed forces and pro-Russian separatists claim that they are holding the airport.

Meanwhile, the report of the Information and Analytical Center of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) states that two battalion-tactical groups of the armed forces of the Russian Federation crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border.

In an unknown direction

“According to operational information from the National Security and Defense Council, today two battalion-tactical groups of the armed forces of the Russian Federation were recorded crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border,” the statement said.

According to the speaker of the antiterrorist operation in the east of Ukraine (ATO) Andrei Lysenko, the battalion-tactical groups that crossed the Ukrainian border consist of about 600-700 of the Russian military.

Lysenko said that the groups crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border in the Luhansk region in a section of the border that is not controlled by the Ukrainian military. Further direction of these groups is unknown, the representative of the ATO said.

The BBC does not independently confirm this information.

The Russian side categorically denies the participation of its regular troops in what it calls the internal Ukrainian conflict, although it recognizes that the military from Russia can take part in hostilities as volunteers while on vacation.

The fighting for the Donetsk airport intensified last week, when the separatist forces attempted to seize the building of the new terminal during several attacks, the siege of which they had been leading for several months.

Ukrainian Stalingrad

The separatist command forces reported that the attempt by the Ukrainian military to seize the strategically important Putilov bridge between the airport and the city has been foiled. The bridge is blown up.

According to the adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Anton Gerashchenko, the losses of militants reach three hundred people.

“According to our data, about 300 terrorists have died over the past week. As a result of powerful artillery counterattacks both near the airport and near Gorlovka, Komsomolsk and Volnovakha,” Ukrayinska Pravda quotes Gerashchenko as saying.

Meanwhile, separatist leaders from the “Donetsk People’s Republic” accused the Ukrainian military of shelling residential areas of Gorlovka north of the airport.

Ukrainian television reported the death of a father and child as a result of shelling by the separatists of the city of Debaltseve from the northeast of Donetsk.

Donetsk airport has enormous symbolic and strategic significance for both sides of the conflict. Ukrainian media view him as a symbol of the fighting spirit of the Ukrainian nation. They write a lot about “cyborgs,” the name given to the volunteers protecting the airport.

Separatists are making every effort to debunk the myth of the invincibility of Ukrainian “cyborgs.” They consider the airport a possible launch point for a Ukrainian counter-offensive.

Despite the fact that the airport is almost completely destroyed, some military experts believe that its runway can be used to deliver weapons and ammunition.

On Monday, the battles for the new terminal of the airport went with particular ferocity. Separatists blew up part of the ceiling of the second floor, where the Ukrainian military are located. About this in his Facebook said the adviser to the Ukrainian president of Petro Poroshenko Yuri Biryukov.

According to him, many Ukrainian soldiers were injured.

At the same time, the deterioration of the situation in other areas in eastern Ukraine is reported.

In the Mariupol region, Ukrainian security officials recorded 11 cases of artillery strikes, mortar, grenade launcher and anti-tank missile systems.

Most of the positions of the Ukrainian army were subjected to shelling in the area of ​​Nikolaevka, Gnutovo and Chermalik, but information about a full-scale attack on the city was not confirmed, writes BBC News.