Latest from OSCE Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) to Ukraine based on information received as of 18:00 (Kyiv time), 28 August 2014

This report is for media and the general public.

The SMM witnessed the impact of the conflict on the civilian population in the town of Yasynuvata, and met – in Chernivtsi – with Ukrainian activists delivering supplies to the area of fighting. The SMM deployed an advance team to Mariupol (113 km south of Donetsk) last night at 22:30hrs. They will be reinforced today. Reporting will also be initiated today.

The situation in Kharkiv was calm.

The SMM talked to the family of an 82-year-old woman, who was reportedly shot by a member of the Ukrainian voluntary ‘Aidar’ battalion in the village of Oleksandrivka, around 90 km north-west of Luhansk (see Daily Report of 28 August 2014). The chief surgeon in Severodonetsk (97 km north-west of Luhansk) hospital confirmed to the SMM that an 82-year-old woman with bullet wounds had been brought to the hospital on 23 August, and was in intensive care.

The SMM visited Yasynuvata (20 km north-east of Donetsk) and saw around 80 people in an underground bunker approximately 110 metres long, and 25 metres wide. Most of the sheltering civilians were elderly women. They said that they had been there since 12 August, and were worried about their situation, especially taking into consideration the onset of autumn and winter. In another shelter, located in the basement of a school, the SMM saw around 60 persons, including elderly people and infants, apparently housed there for two or three weeks. There was no electricity in the basement, which consisted of an unspecified number of small rooms – the sheltering civilians used small torches and candles. They seemed to have food and water.

The SMM observed in Yasynuvata several multi-storey apartment buildings with most of the flats apparently empty. One of the apartment buildings had two indications of projectile impact. The SMM saw remnants of Grad rockets next to the building. Several combatants from the so-called ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ (‘DPR’) approached the SMM and reported that on 12 August one of the apartment blocks, used by them as an observation post, was partially damaged by Ukrainian artillery. The SMM also saw a large playground with two signs of artillery impact. Trees, branches and demolished tiles from rooftops littered the place.

An entrepreneur from Kramatorsk (97 km north of Donetsk) told the SMM that small and medium-sized enterprises were reviving their activities after several months of interruption. However, many of them had difficulties in delivering current orders because of insufficient capacity.

The situation in Dnipropetrovsk, Kherson and Odessa was calm.

A doctor from Chernivtsi, and social activists providing supplies such as clothes, shoes, military uniforms, food, and medicines to soldiers fighting in Donbas, told the SMM that their convoys, and volunteering medical personnel, had become sniper targets of either  the ‘DPR’ or the so-called ‘Luhansk People’s Republic’.

The Ivano-Frankivsk metropolitan of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church expressed dismay about the damage to two churches in Donetsk belonging to the Greek-Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox (Moscow Patriarchate) Churches. He informed the SMM that chaplains from the Greek-Catholic Church were going to the east to support soldiers, for example, by providing medical care, or they were acting as military chaplains. The church collected funds for flak jackets and helmets for troops. The bishop also said that during the Maidan period, 70 Greek-Catholic priests from Ivano-Frankivsk worked on rotation in Kyiv.

The situation in Lviv was calm.

Nearly 1,000 participants of a peaceful demonstration held in in front of the Ministry of Defence in Kyiv called on the Government for more intensive support of Ukrainian forces, in particular for the Donbas battalion, which is reportedly encircled by ‘DPR’-affiliated fighters in the town of Ilovaisk (47 km south-east of Donetsk).