Donetsk, Dec 10 - DAN. Ukrainian troops shelled the Donetsk People’s Republic territory knowing about the visit to Donetsk of Mark Etherington, Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, the DPR People’s Militia said on Thursday.

Overnight to Thursday, the Ukrainian army's 36th Brigade servicemen delivered a strike at DPR southern areas using 120mm mortars. The outskirts of the Leninskoye and Novaya Tavriya villages came under fire. On Wednesday, 35th Brigade fired mortars at north-western Gorlovka.

“We urge representatives of the Mission’s leadership in the Republic, including Mark Etherington, to record all the violations by Ukrainian gunmen who have stepped up the attempts to destabilise the situation by strikes,” the DPR militia said.

The 35th and 36th Brigades commanders, Nikolay Palas and Andrey Gnatov, issued orders to deliver mortar strike in open display of their attitude to the settlement of the conflict, it added.

The package of tighter ceasefire control measures came into force on July 27, 2020. The document bans the use of all weapons, deployment of hardware, special operations, engineer works and unmanned aerial vehicles flights. The Kiev army regularly violates accords.*jk