On the May 1 Labor Day holiday, Kremlin-backed separatist leader Oleksandr Zakharchenko said that his forces would take more territory around his home base of Donetsk to “guarantee the safety of our land” from attacks by the Ukrainian military.
Donetsk, which lost more than half of its pre-war population of 1 million people, was pounded with rocket salvos the next day.
Social media from 10:30 p.m. until after midnight were filled with videos shot by local residents, some of whom narrated in English, of shelling of the regional capital, which Kyiv hasn’t controlled since mid-April 2014.
Russia’s Vesti.ru the same night reported that Kremlin-backed separatists told them that the city was being shelled with 155-millimeter artillery, “a caliber that is only used by NATO.”
Next, Ukraine’s positions near Donetsk, in government-controlled areas of Luhansk Oblast and a hotspot near the village of Shyrokyne along the Azov Sea coast came under heavy combined Russian-separatist heavy-weapon fire, and included tanks, various mortar calibers of up to 122 millimeters and multiple-rocket launchers.
One Ukrainian soldier and one civilian were killed and six troops were wounded, according to government statements on May 3, including the Defense Ministry.
Shortly after midnight on May 3, Russia’s Foreign Ministry released a statement accusing the “Ukrainian armed forces” for “shelling Donetsk using heavy artillery.”
Afterward, Ukrainian Gen. Andriy Taran gave a briefing in Soledar in Donetsk Oblast as part of the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination – a group that monitors the so-called truce and consists of Ukrainian and Russian military personnel, Moscow-backed separatists and members of the OSCE.
He denounced Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s statement, saying that its “contents aren’t confirmed by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and armed forces of Ukraine.”
“The unconfirmed information of the shelling of civilian areas of (the city) of Donetsk, which had been allegedly conducted by the Armed Forces of Ukraine shouldn’t be grounds for official statements by the ministries of foreign affairs of other nations,” Taran stated.
Ukraine’s foreign ministry also on May 3 rejected the “accusations and responsibly claims that Ukrainian military did not commit any shelling of the city, like any other settlement on the territory of individual regions of Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
“Any use of weapons by the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, if it does occur, carried out as a necessary step in response to military provocations of illegal armed formations operating in the individual regions, in the event of a direct threat to life Ukrainian soldiers.”
Ukraine’s Ambassador to Austria Olexander Scherba tweeted on May 3: “Whoever conducted tonight’s shelling of Donetsk neither acted in the interest of Ukraine nor on Ukraine’s command.”
More than 100 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in eastern Ukraine since a truce that never took hold was brokered on Feb. 12 in Minsk, Belarus.
