Kyiv: The Ukraine army reported the first death of a soldier in weeks on Saturday and accused Moscow-backed rebels of sharply escalating attacks that have redoubled fears of an imminent Russian invasion. The joint military command for east Ukraine said that a soldier received a fatal shrapnel wound in the conflict zone running across two separatist regions near the Russian border.
Ukraine’s emergency service said that two of its staff were wounded during a wave of attacks on Friday. The armed forces said rebels had used 82 and 120 millimetre-calibre mortar shells- banned under previous ceasefire deals- in towns across the front running through the eastern regions of Lugansk and Donetsk.
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Separatist fighters are ‘firing artillery rounds on population centres and placing their artillery systems near residential homes’, the Ukrainian army said. ‘This way, our enemy is trying to force our armed forces to return fire and then blame them for shelling civilians’, it added. The military further said that it was continuing to ‘rebuff and contain the armed aggression’ without attacking civilians, and accused Russia of directing its allies’ attacks.
Moscow formally denies being involved in the conflict and calls it a Ukrainian internal affair. But monitors from the OSCE European security body have reported regular shipments of Russian weapons across the border throughout the eight-year war.
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