All able-bodied men in easter Ukraine’s breakaway region Donbas have been called on to stand up to Kyiv’s aggression in response to claims of massive shelling along the frontline, Russian media report.
The leaders of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) have announced on Saturday that they have ordered the mobilization of all able-bodied men.
DPR head Denis Pushilin urged in a video address all men in the republic capable of carrying arms to stand in defense and come to military enlistment offices, noting he’d signed a decree on general mobilization.
A similar general mobilization decree has also been issued by the LPR leader Leonid Pasechnik, who banned men aged 18-55 from leaving the region.
Stressing that large-scale shelling by Ukraine of the territories of Donbas is underway, Pushilin pointed out that DPR is capable of halting Kyiv’s aggression and that it has prevented Ukrainian special services from engaging in several terrorism acts in the last several days.
He claimed that throughout Friday and on Saturday morning, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began shelling villages along the frontline with heavy artillery using mortars, grenade launchers, and anti-tank missile systems.
However, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council Alexey Danilov denied that Kyiv was planning to attack the DPR and LPR, accusing DPR of violating the ceasefire dozens of times on Friday and shelling multiple villages in Kyiv-controlled areas.
Meanwhile, the authorities of the DPR and the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic started the evacuation of civilians to Russia on Friday, claiming that they fear a further escalation of the military aggression by the Ukrainian government.
As of Saturday morning, according to Evgeny Katsavalov, a senior government official in Lugansk, about 25,000 residents of LPR, and 6,600 people, including almost 2,500 children from DPR have crossed the border with Russia.
Katsavalov added that the authorities are in the process of organizing the evacuation of an additional 10,000 residents, but these numbers have not been verified by Russia.
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