Donetsk, May 29 - DAN. The Donetsk People’s Republic armed forces have nothing to do with the shelling of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission’s unmanned aerial vehicle launch area in the vicinity of Dzerzhinsk; the fire was delivered from Ukrainian army positions, the DPR Operations Command said in a statement.

“We have long reported the Ukrainian army’s plans to use its air defence to down all OSCE SMM UAVs in order to prevent the recording of banned Ukrainian weapons in the vicinity of Dzerzhinsk,” the statement said. “The occupation forces could think of nothing cleverer than shelling the UAV launch area with mortars and accusing the DPR of the attack.”

The DPR Operations Command called the incident an act of intimidation of international observers. The fire was delivered from the depth of Ukrainian positions, it said.

Earlier on Tuesday, the press centre of the Joint Forces Operation Headquarters accused the DPR of shelling the OSCE SMM UAV launch area. The press centre posted the statement on its Facebook page.*jk