On Friday, Ukrainian law enforcers opened fire on a force station in Donbass near the Petrovskoe settlement and the outskirts of the city of Gorlovka, controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a DPR representative at the Joint Centre for Ceasefire Control and Coordination told journalists.
“Today at 7.25 a.m. a violation of the ceasefire by the armed groups of Ukraine in the direction Bogdanovka – Petrovskoe within the limits of the breeding area No. 3 was recorded. Large calibre machine guns and small arms were used. At 7.30 a.m. shooting was recorded in the direction of Zhovanka-Zaitsevo, 10 minutes of 82 millimeter caliber were fired”, – said the representative of the department.
DPR-controlled Gorlovka is located at the line of contact, 40 kilometres north of Donetsk, and is regularly shelled. About 250,000 people lived in the city before the conflict started. Gorlovka is home to an engineering plant and chemical plant, Stirol, which stopped working when the hostilities broke out in Donbass.
Militia and law enforcement officers have already twice withdrawn their forces from the line of contact in the area of Petrovsky. The first separation of forces took place in 2016, but soon the law enforcers returned to the abandoned positions.