New clashes kill three army soldiers in east Ukraine: Kiev
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Pro-Russia forces withdraw their tanks from positions near the town of Novoazovsk in the Donetsk region, October 21, 2015.
The Ukrainian military has announced the death of three of its soldiers in a fresh wave of clashes with pro-Russia forces in the country’s troubled east.
“As a result of hostilities, three Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and another six wounded over the past 24 hours,” Oleksandr Motuzyanyk, a spokesman for Kiev’s military, said on Sunday.
Accusing the pro-Russia forces of increasing attacks against the Ukrainian military and using heavy weapons, Motuzyanyk said the situation along the front-line “had escalated again.”
Conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine after people in the country’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea voted for unification with Russia in March 2014. The West brands the development as Moscow’s annexation of the territory. The US and its allies in Europe also accuse Moscow of having a major hand in the crisis in eastern Ukraine, a charge that Moscow denies.
Ukraine’s eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk have witnessed deadly clashes between pro-Moscow forces and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched military operations later in April 2014 to crush pro-Moscow protests there.
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