Occupiers continue digging trenches in Luhansk region – OSCE

The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM) has recorded that the armed formations of the Russian Federation extended previously dug trenches near the occupied village of Holubivske in Luhansk region, according to an OSCE SMM report of June 25.

In a field about 1km northnorth-west of the northern edge of Holubivske (non-government-controlled, 51km west of Luhansk), an SMM UAV spotted a 22m-long trench extension, running south-west to northeast (not visible in imagery from 15 May 2021).

In a field about 2km further south-west, it spotted a 37m-long trench extension (not visible in imagery from 24 January 2021) running south to north.

Both extensions were assessed as a consolidation of existing trenches of the armed formations.

These trench extensions were dug in areas where the distances between the forward positions of the armed formations and those of the Ukrainian Armed Forces are between 150m and 400m.

As Ukrinform reported, the Ukrainian Mission to the OSCE has repeatedly drawn the attention of the participating countries to the engineering equipment of positions by the armed formations of the Russian Federation in eastern Ukraine, which is a gross violation of additional measures to strengthen the ceasefire, which include a ban on engineering work on existing positions and construction of new ones.

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