Main news of Donbas: Members of “Tornado” Battalion are detained; there is conflict escalation in the Donbas

According to the ATO headquarters’ press center, during the last day, June 17, the situation in the ATO zone was complicated, in particular, militants shelled Ukrainian positions 80 times and tried to break through the defense line three times. However, the situation  has been controlled by Ukrainian militaries. The press center also informs that the night was tense too. In the Luhansk region there were fewer shells, but in the late evening, there was a battle with two sabotage and reconnaissance groups of militants who incurred losses and retreated.

About 30 militants assaulted Ukrainian positions near Maryinka. Ten militaries were wounded.
In the evening June 16 and at night June 17, Petrovskiy district in Donetsk was shelled. According to the information obtained, there were no distructions; one person was wounded.

There was a powerful explosion in Kuybyshevskiy district (Donetsk) at The State Plant of Chemical Products. The circumstances are being clarified; there were no victims, according to the information presented by Nikolay Kolesnyk, “Kryvbas” battalion curator.

Servicemen of “Tornado” battalion stopped the train which was trying to smuggle cast iron, explosives and  separatist literature from the occupied territory. The next day, Ruslan Onischenko, “Tornado” commander, and six servicemen were detained by the Military Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine. The battalion representatives claim that law enforcement structures want to get rid of them, as these structures supervise corruption schemes in the Donbas. The Military Prosecutor’s Office states that the detained servicemen are suspected of mugging and violence.

Two servicemen were detained by law enforcement structures on suspicion of a murder of two women, a mother and a daughter, in Artemivsk district of the Donetsk region, as the Press Service of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Donetsk region reports. The soldiers shot the women in the head with a machine gun. Two regulars of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were detained and confessed to the murder. On June 15 they penetrated into the house where the perished women, who they suspected of collaborating with separatists, lived and shot them dead with a machine gun.

Pavel Kanygin, “The Novaya Gazeta” correspondent, who returned to Moscow after he had been detained by the “DPR” illegal organization, spoke about censorship in Donetsk. “These people think that they are building a state, but they do not understand some things about state structures,” said Manygin, commenting the way he was treated by “DPR”.

Read here about other news of the Donbas.