Consultations with Normandy Four Leaders Held Due to Escalation in Donbas

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is holding consultations with the Normandy Four leaders due to the intensification of shelling in Donbas, as a result of which four members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed on Friday, 26 March.

A corresponding statement was made by Oleksiy Arestovych, the representative of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group. He added that Ukraine had already sent a note to the OSCE.

At the same time, Zelensky expressed his condolences to the families and relatives of the fallen defenders on the Head of State’s Facebook page. He also instructed the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to make a trip to Donbas to find out all the circumstances.

“Representatives of Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group are authorised to initiate an immediate meeting of the Security Working Group, as well as to urgently discuss this issue at the level of advisers to the Normandy format leaders,” the President said.

According to him, the situation at the front has been escalating since the beginning of this year.

“Further progress in fulfilling all other agreements and resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine is impossible to the sound of gunshots and explosions. In order to hear each other in every sense of the word, a comprehensive and stable silence must be established in Donbas,” Zelensky summed up.

According to the Joint Forces Operation Headquarters, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two more were wounded near the village of Shumy in Donbas on the afternoon of 26 March. The militants fired 82mm mortars, which are prohibited by the Minsk Agreements.

On 20 March, 28-year-old soldier Kyrylo Bykovsky was killed near the village of Shumy. On 19 March, junior sergeant Andriy Hrabar was killed in mortar shelling near Vodiane. Junior sergeant Viktor Paseka was killed near Pivdenne on 18 March.

Bohdan Marusyak