Eastern Ukraine: Fear is back

Status: 23.09.2021 1:41 p.m.

In eastern Ukraine, observers note dozens of ceasefire violations every day. At the moment there is significantly more shooting again and civilian casualties are being made again. Is a new hot phase of the conflict looming?

By Christina Nagel, ARD Studio Moscow

Less than a year ago, the foreign ministries of Germany and France welcomed the completion of a new transition point in eastern Ukraine in the Luhansk region in a joint declaration. In the small town of Shchastya – as agreed at the Paris summit in 2019 – it should be possible in future to commute back and forth between the Ukrainian motherland and the self-proclaimed Republic of Luhansk in order to make life a little easier for people on both sides of the line of conflict.

The transition has been blocked to this day. In the meantime, the ceasefire doesn’t even hold. The war is back in town. Last week she was shot at for the first time in five years.

“It is cynical that the shelling took place at exactly 7:30 a.m. and 7:40 a.m., at a time when the children were going to school,” explains local administration chief Olexandr Dunez, who was slightly injured in the shelling. He was just in the process of inspecting the damage that had been caused by an initial fire shortly before. Fortunately, he said on the “Ukraine 24” channel, there were no deaths. Because there are civilian victims again. According to the OSCE, eleven people died in August alone.

Even seven years after the conflict over Eastern Ukraine began, the region is still far from reliable calm – the conflict is still omnipresent in many villages and small towns.

Image: REUTERS

Increasing losses on both sides

In addition, there are increasing losses on the part of the Ukrainian army, but also among the separatists. Russian state television reports attacks on villages and cities in the occupied territories and on civil infrastructure.

And on “Radio Liberty Ukraine” a woman from Shchastja speaks about the residents’ fear, which after the events of 2014 and 2015 had never been gone, but has recently subsided. She is back now.

Lots of ceasefire violations

People in the conflict zone are worried that the war could enter a new, hot phase. There is hardly a day on which the OSCE observer mission does not register dozens, usually hundreds, of violations of the agreed ceasefire, ranging from exchanges of fire to explosions.

As a rule, reports one of the soldiers of the Ukrainian military in the 5th Channel, shooting is done in the morning – when it starts to get dark, and then in the evening when it is slowly getting dark. Another soldier says the positions are close together again.

Exchange of fire, especially in the morning and in the evening – the fighting along the demarcation line in eastern Ukraine is on the rise again.

Image: AFP

The heavy weapons are back

Hardly anything seems to be left of the withdrawal of the troops on both sides, the so-called unbundling. Heavy weapons are also back at the front a long time ago. Russia has also decided not to extend the OSCE observer mission at the Russian border checkpoints at Gukovo and Donetsk. It expires at the end of the month.

The implementation of the Minsk Agreement, which should actually lead to a pacification of the conflict, is not only stalling. Hardly achieved progress has meanwhile turned back into setbacks.

Situation in eastern Ukraine is coming to a head: civilian victims again

Christina Nagel, ARD Moscow, September 23, 2021 10:55 am

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