During the anti-terrorist operation in Donbass, the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered significant losses in manpower, and these losses are much more than official Kyiv voices.
Official losses during the armed conflict in the Donbas, announced by Ukraine, were more than 1,800 people killed and 8,500 wounded, - said Lieutenant General Igor Voronchenko, head of the main personnel department of the Ukrainian General Staff.
According to the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered almost half of their irretrievable losses outside the battlefield.
“To date, the losses of Ukrainian servicemen for the entire period of the ATO are 1,842 servicemen, 831 are non-combat. 8,519 servicemen were wounded,” said a representative of the General Staff.
Igor Voronenchenko said that during the entire period of the anti-terrorist operation in Donbas, about 100,000 Ukrainian servicemen received the status of a participant in hostilities. In total, about 129,700 people are eligible for this status.
At a press conference in early November, Deputy Chief of Staff of the People's Militia of the LPR Igor Yashchenko announced other real numbers of losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the ATO. According to him, real losses the Ukrainian side is several times more than the official Kyiv voices.
Real losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donbass:
from April 13, 2014 - to November 13, 2015 - 85,880 people (cargo 200, 300 and 500), losses of foreign intelligence PMCs, NATO are not included in these figures; of which: 74560 - (cargo 200 and cargo 300); 11320 - (cargo 500, deserters or militiamen).
So 37,200 (cargo 200) - military personnel and various paramilitary formations. Of these: 4,540 (cargo 200) - militants of the "Right Sector" who became part of the National Guard; 5,600 (cargo 200) - employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and fighters of territorial battalions and employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs itself; 3,225 (cargo 200) - other categories of armed formations (Ministry of Emergency Situations, Military Prosecutor's Office, doctors, repairmen, escort brigades, engineering service and other military).
Further, 355 people (cargo 200) are employees of the Border Troops. 1,635 (cargo 200) - employees of the SBU. "Alpha" lost 500 (cargo 200), 400 people (cargo 300). Sumy "Alpha" was completely destroyed, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Poltava, Lvov, Rivne, Volyn, Vinnitsa, Zhitomir and Kharkov "Alpha" - suffered serious losses. Serious losses at the Omega special forces.
21,815 (cargo 200) - servicemen of the regular Ukrainian army.
For your information: near Debaltseve, about 25% of the personnel (about 2,200 people) were NATO servicemen and foreign mercenaries.
1690 (cargo 200 and 300) mercenaries from 39 countries, including: American PMC Asademi - 270; and its "daughters" Greystone Limited PMC - 180; Polish PMC "ASBS Othago" - 700; from Canada, Germany, Britain, Finland, Azerbaijan, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Italy, Spain, Croatia, France, Sweden, Turkey, Czech Republic, Arab countries and Africa.
255 (235 - cargo 200, 20 - cargo 300) - employees of the CIA, FBI, military personnel of the US SSO (Special Operations Forces), US DIA special forces, SAS - British Airborne Service, French legion, Israeli intelligence Mossad, military intelligence "Aman" and service general security"Shabak", counterintelligence Shin Bet and Tsakhal of the Israeli army.
The current situation in the Donbass
The Ukrainian military continues to concentrate forces east of Artyomovsk, in the area of st. Luhansk, preparing for the offensive, finally blocked the checkpoint and traffic from the DPR in the direction of Volnovakha. Columns of BM-21 "Grad" went in the direction of Artemovsk in the morning. Artillery, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers (up to 30 units), as well as the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, have already moved into the Gorlovka area.
10 tanks took up positions in the settlement. Dzerzhinsk, 5 km to the contact line. 12 tanks in the area of N. p. Novgorodskoye, to the line of contact 6 km. In n.p. Nikolaevka, MLRS BM-21 "Grad" were installed in the amount of 5 units, 8 km from the line of contact.
In the DPR, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are probing the defense of Gorlovka, there is a threat of an offensive near Gorlovka - there is a high intensity of fire and the formation of assault battalions by the security forces.
Attacks are being made on the territory of the Donetsk airport: mortars, artillery and howitzers, which, according to the Minsk agreements, must be withdrawn from the line of contact. In addition, mortar positions were fired at militia positions in the area of the village of Peski and Spartak.
Attacks on the positions of the NAF are going along the front line around Donetsk: Staromikhaylovka, Maryinka, Oleksandrivka, Yasinovatsky checkpoint. Krasnogorovka-Staromikhaylovka: shooting battle (heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, AGS). Nevelskoye-Staromikhaylovka - (mortars). From Krasnogorovka they are shelling Staromikhaylovka from tanks.
From the side of Nevelskoye, the security forces are shelling the positions of the NAF from the MLRS.
Near the Donetsk airport, a fighter of the organized crime group "Legion of Freedom", the 93rd Motorized Brigade, the chairman of the IPO "Sokol", volunteer Yuriy Cherkashin "Chernota" was seriously wounded. As a result of shelling from the Ukrainian self-propelled guns "Acacia" near Uglegorsk, two soldiers of the NAF were killed.
In the LPR, the hottest spots now are the districts of Sokolniki, Zhelobka, Shchastia, Popasna, st. Lugansk. Ukraine made three attempts to infiltrate the DRG. All three groups were scattered or destroyed. There is a high activity of unmanned aerial vehicles of the Ukrainian military. One device was shot down.
Clearly more than the official figures. One has only to remember how the corpses of soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were dumped in 2015 in the Blue Lakes near Slavyansk. And this cannon fodder was not recorded anywhere.
Or here's another: at the beginning of the war, there were battles in the Amvrosievka area, where, according to the Ukrainian media, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not suffer any losses at all. However, reports from the field commanders of the DPR speak of the loss of about 300 people by the Ukrainian army.
At the same time, the families of the dead servicemen receive notifications that their relatives simply deserted, which brings not only shame and grief, but also deprives their family members of the right to at least some benefits and monetary compensation.
Another example. According to official data from the Ministry of Defense, 108 fighters were killed during the exit from Ilovaisk at the end of August 2014. At the same time, Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema said that about 200 Ukrainian soldiers were killed there. The commander of the battalion "Donbass" Semyon Semenchenko announced the death of more than a thousand Ukrainian soldiers. And the chairman of the temporary commission of the Verkhovna Rada on investigating the causes of the tragedy in Ilovaisk, Andrei Senchenko, said that from July 23 to August 23, the grouping of the "D sector" of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which took part in the operation in Ilovaisk, missed 3.4 thousand fighters. Quote: “According to our data, as of July 23, there were 4,000 fighters in sector D, and on the morning of August 23, there were 600 of them.”
It should be noted that the lists of dead ATO participants do not include foreign and local mercenaries, neo-Nazi volunteers, military instructors (like those who advise the Donbass battalion) and criminals.
Not included in the lists of official military losses are people whose relatives receive notices of death with wording that allows businessmen from the Ministry of Defense not to pay the families of the victims the promised benefits in the amount of 609 thousand hryvnias. In the spring of 2014, the wounded near Volnovakha (!) complained to journalists that they were forced to sign strange protocols, in which they are described as “victims of an accident or an accident.” And they mentioned the protocols of examination of corpses, which stated that their fighting friends "died under unclear circumstances from gunshot wounds."
In addition to those whose deaths are recorded in a strange way, hushed up and not included in the lists of the dead, there are also a lot of people involved in very impressive lists - “missing”, “deserted”, listed as wounded (while death from wounds is a matter of not too long ago). ) and so on.
A number of opposition politicians have repeatedly addressed the public with statements that the authorities are brazenly lying, hiding and underestimating the real losses of thousands of their military during the "ATO". Indirect evidence in favor of this is the transfer to the combat zone of more and more formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the next waves of mobilization. In the summer of the year before last, the deputies of the "For Peace and Stability" group turned to the president and the government with a demand to declassify data on the dead citizens of Ukraine. According to the statement of the co-chairman of the deputy group Sergei Gorokhov, the number of deaths during the "ATO" amounted to more than 10 thousand people by the beginning of August 2014.
In the autumn, even the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and the leader of the Radical Party Oleg Lyashko accused the President of Ukraine and the then Minister of Defense of crimes against their own soldiers. Having shown the relevant photos, he stated: “Poroshenko and Geletey are brazenly lying, hiding more than 8,000 of our losses in the ATO! These guys gave their lives for them, for the country, for their people. But they and their relatives did not receive any gratitude and respect from our leadership. Moreover, it turns out that Poroshenko burns our heroes like some dogs in German crematoria! I got a photo from a reconnaissance satellite, where you can clearly see a field crematorium near a military hospital in the ATO zone near Novoaydar. As I was informed, this crematorium was given to us by Germany...”
Many dead military men were not only burned in crematoria, but also buried in the ground without markings of burials or identification before death. And not only in spring and summer, when it was easiest to underestimate and falsify real losses, but also in autumn. For example, on September 22, the authorities of the Zaporozhye region announced the burial of 55 unidentified bodies of ATO participants. The next day, the authorities of Dnipropetrovsk prepared graves for 332 Ukrainian servicemen, of which only 22 bodies were identified ...
Simply put, the loss figures, which are voiced by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, are underestimated not at times, but dozens of times.
“From the beginning of the ATO to the present day, 2,629 soldiers have died as a result of hostilities. Of these, 2220 are servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The rest of the dead - from the ranks of the National Guard, the State Border Service, the SBU, public service for emergencies. 9,453 servicemen were injured, 7,674 of them from the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, said at a briefing in Kyiv in March 2017.
This means that the numbers of the dead can be safely increased by 30 times - this is approximately 78-80 thousand people.
The fighting in Donbas continues, adding to the stunning statistics of mutual losses of the warring parties.
Here is what Novosti Donetska i DNR reported on February 25: “The DNR militia reports a violent tank battle in the south of Donetsk people's republic- Mariupol direction, southern front. In Shirokino, the forces of the people's militia of Donbass and the security forces of the Azov battalion converged.
"The tank battle is going on in Shirokino. This is between Novoazovsk and Mariupol. Both from our side and from the side of the enemy, 3-4 units of heavy equipment are involved," - informs the headquarters of the DPR on February 25, 2015.
So far, the wounded have not been admitted to the Novoazovsk hospital. On February 24, two wounded and three shell-shocked militiamen arrived. Today, several DPR fighters came with minor injuries, also after yesterday's battle. To date, there are no wounded in the Novoazovsk hospital.
Shirokino was considered the territory of the DPR, until after the new year it was suddenly attacked by Azov. Now it is considered a neutral territory, and after the announcement of a truce on February 15, Shirokino is the hottest spot in Donbass.
Earlier it was reported about the battles of the militias and security forces in the area of Sand. The DPR forces are suffering heavy losses, as the command forbids opening artillery fire.
These are the news of the DPR and the Donetsk People's Republic on February 25. Despite the fact that the ceasefire regime is "generally respected."
Meanwhile, on February 25, terrible figures of real losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the ATO in Donbas were once again published.
During the ATO, Ukraine lost only 26,000 servicemen killed! See full list losses of the Ukrainian army in New Russia.
Until today, the latest data on the losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the so-called ATO in the southeast of the country, leaked to the media, were data on losses for the period from May 2 to September 5. The total losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine killed, wounded, captured, missing and deserters were then called
47 thousand 103 people.
According to the FSB of the Russian Federation, the total losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the punitive operation against the militias of Novorossia, the so-called ATO, from April 3 to February 15, inclusive, guaranteed (according to confirmed data) amounted to:
KILLED: TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED EIGHTEEN APU servicemen. Including: - from the composition of the units of the "Right Sector" - 3,729 people.
- Military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine - 13,862 people (in mainly 25th airborne Dnepropetrovsk brigade, 95th airmobile Zhytomyr brigade, 24th motorized Lvov brigade, 79th airmobile brigade, 51st, 24th and 72nd mechanized brigades, other units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine)
- Military personnel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine - 4,623 people.
- Servicemen from SBU units - 379 people.
- Ukrainian border guards - 249 people.
- US military personnel (from the special forces of the DIA, FBI and CIA) - 88 people.
- Mercenaries of private military companies: "ASBS Othago", Poland, Asademi and Greystone Limited, USA and others - 737 people.
- Servicemen of other categories of armed formations - 1781 people.
For reference: according to the operational data of the FSB, the killed servicemen from among the militants of the "Right Sector", nat. guards, battalions "Aidar", "Azov" and "Dnepr" were secretly taken to Dnepropetrovsk and secretly burned in a crematorium. The dead soldiers of the "Right Sector" are officially listed as missing.
Mothers of servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine are horrified: real data about the losses of ATO soldiers during the three years of the war with the civilian population of Donbass got into the Network.
On April 7, 2014, the then Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, Acting President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov made a statement that is considered to be the official announcement of the ATO.
"An anti-crisis headquarters has been set up tonight, and anti-terrorist measures will be taken against those who have taken up arms," Turchynov said in a televised address.
It is now known that the "measures" have been dragging on for almost three years and there is no end in sight.
From the very beginning of the "anti-terrorist" operation, the ATO soldiers began to suffer losses. Its first victim is an employee from the Poltava "Alpha" SBU captain Gennady Bilichenko. In total, according to official data, since the deployment of hostilities in the Donbass, the Ukrainian security forces have lost more than 2,000 people killed and more than 9,000 wounded. Andrey Lysenko, the “talking head” of the Ministry of Defense on ATO issues, announced this on Monday.
"The total combat losses of our military in this war are 2,629 people," Lysenko said.
He also clarified that 2220 are military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the rest are representatives of the National Guard, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Border Service, and the State Emergency Service. Lysenko added that 9,453 members of the ATO were injured, including 7,664 soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
However, these figures are significantly underestimated. First of all, there are no deaths outside the ATO zone in all statistical data, including the wounded in hospitals, deaths from diseases, and so on. In general, the dead Bandera and Nazis who fought in units that were not part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are never taken into account. And such, by the way, in 2014 was the majority.
We all remember the famous gravedigger of the Donbass battalion, Semyon Semenchenko, who at least three times in the spring and summer of 2014 went to the Maidan in Kyiv to collect the next battalion, in exchange for those previously disposed of. Today, even he himself will not remember how many there were - but an order bearer, an officer, an untouchable deputy of parliament.
Do not forget that to this day there are battalions of foreign citizens, such as the Dudaev (Munaev) battalion. Americans and French, Poles and Georgians serve in the regiment of the Ministry of Internal Affairs "Azov". At the same time they serve illegally - according to the law Foreign citizens are not eligible to serve in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
There are also parts of Bandera and Nazis that are not controlled by state structures, in the form of separate detachments of “right-wingers” and the like - their losses are also not included in the statistics. That is why everything less people even on the remnants of Ukraine, he believes in official figures and tries to find out the truth on his own.
Thus, Ukrainian programmer Evgeny Dokukin, relying on open sources, published on his Facebook page the data that during the ATO in Donbass, 4209 AFU fighters were killed. Moreover, Dokukin does not include in this number the "warriors" who were missing and held captive by the militias - he counted only those who had ever been mentioned in open sources as dead.
“As of March 19, 2017[...]3746 dead. And also 34 soldiers and 429 unknown soldiers are mentioned separately, so in the end we have information about 4209 dead Ukrainian servicemen. There are still soldiers who are considered missing or in captivity, there are separate statistics for them, ”the programmer wrote.
If Dokukin's calculations are correct, then the number of wounded ATO soldiers should be different. If we take the proportion based on the data provided by Lysenko, then this number could be about 15 thousand people.
Thus, in three years, Ukraine lost about 20,000 security officials killed and wounded. However, this figure may be too low, as different reasons the Ukrainian military are trying to hide their losses. And the ATO soldiers suffer losses every day.
For example, according to the Novorossiya news agency, on March 20, as a result of an attempt to break through the defense of the militia in the area locality Kominternovo (DPR) near Mariupol, the Armed Forces of Ukraine lost ten people killed and five wounded, one BMP-1 was also destroyed. Considering the losses of the Nazi volunteer battalions, exact number Apparently no one will ever know. Especially since the war continues...
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) has released its annual report The Military Balance-2016, which describes the combat capabilities and technical equipment of the armed forces of various countries of the world. With regard to Ukraine, it is indicated that our country suffered huge losses in armored vehicles and artillery, which can only be explained by the conduct of hostilities in the Donbass. Compared to the "pre-war" The Military Balance-2013, the losses of the Ukrainian army in weapons and equipment in some places amount to about 50% of the previous number. Notable losses the Russian army also suffered in technology. This concerns, first of all, artillery and armored combat vehicles.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies was founded in 1958 and is based in London. He specializes in coverage of military-political conflicts and issues annual reports on the combat capabilities of various armies of the world. Recently, one of these reports was released - The Military Balance-2016. A separate section of this document is devoted to the Ukrainian army. IISS experts mention the annexation of Crimea and note that the mobilization that was carried out to fight the separatists in eastern Ukraine demonstrated that the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were reduced due to an inadequate level of training and insufficient resources.
Context
Obama promised Poroshenko a billion
Commander-in-Chief 04/01/2016Donbass: a humanitarian crisis in the shadow of the media
Vatican Insider 04/10/2016Donbass embraces despair
Correspondent 03/12/2016 The report also states that in 2015, President Petro Poroshenko signed a law to increase the number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from 184 to 250 thousand. At the same time, according to IISS, the Ukrainian armed forces are still “using old Soviet equipment, and the military-industrial complex has begun to restore equipment that was previously in storage, including T-80 tanks. “The United States has begun supplying Ukraine with non-lethal military equipment,” the report says.Currently, according to the IISS, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are armed with 788 tanks, including 710 units of various modifications of the T-64 tank, 70 T-72 tanks and 8 T-80BV tanks. In addition, more than 1,300 tanks are in storage. Among them are 10 newest T-84 tanks (BM Oplot) and 20 obsolete Soviet T-55 tanks.
Also, the Ukrainian army has more than 1,300 units of armored combat vehicles (AFVs), including 210 infantry fighting vehicles (BMP-1) and 960 BMP-2s, as well as over 1,850 units of cannon and rocket artillery. IISS specialists counted 133 Mi-24 attack helicopters, as well as 202 aircraft, which are part of the Ukrainian Air Force. These are fighters, attack aircraft, training, military transport and reconnaissance aircraft. The information on the combat capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not exhausted by the number of armored vehicles and aviation - the report indicates enough exact amount air defense systems, warships, anti-tank weapons, various types helicopters, anti-tank missile systems, armored personnel carriers, combat reconnaissance and patrol vehicles, etc. etc.
At first glance, the force seems quite impressive, but if we compare the data of 2016 with what Ukraine had before the start of the war, then a huge decline is striking, primarily in artillery and armored vehicles. The review of The Military Balance-2013 indicates that two and a half years ago Ukraine had 1100 different modifications of T-64 tanks (165 T-80 tanks, 600 T-72, 650 T-64 and 20 T-55 tanks were in storage); over 3 thousand armored fighting vehicles, including 994 BMP-1 and 1434 BMP-2, as well as 3351 units of cannon and rocket artillery. At the same time, in 2013, IISS experts pointed out that due to the failure of the defense reform, the Ukrainian army is able to defend only “limited territory”, and a large number of Soviet equipment needs to be replaced.
A simple comparison of both documents shows that over the past two years, the Ukrainian army has lost more than 300 tanks, more than half of the AFVs, and almost 50% of artillery systems. Such losses can only be explained by the hostilities in the Donbass, the active phase of which took place in the summer of 2014 and in the winter of 2015, and they were carried out exclusively with the weapons of the ground forces. Combat aviation was used on a limited scale, so its decline is calculated in units.
It is also noteworthy that relatively few tanks were taken from storage to make up for losses, but the losses in armored combat vehicles and artillery, obviously, turned out to be irreplaceable. At the same time, in April, the speaker of the Ministry of Defense Oksana Gavrilyuk reported that since the beginning of the ATO, as of April 2016, 46.5 units of weapons and military equipment had been repaired (in January this figure was 34 thousand units). Thus, according to the Ukrainian officials, the restoration of the combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is proceeding at a good pace. British experts, obviously, do not share this point of view.
Who could inflict such losses on the Ukrainian army? In August 2015, the General Staff published an analysis of the conduct of the ATO in August-September 2014, in which it indicated that by the beginning of August, about 40 thousand personnel were involved in the ATO, including 32 thousand military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and 5.5 thousand military personnel. units of heavy weapons and military equipment. The General Staff assessed the ratio of forces with the militants as 1 to 1, however, it is probably only about manpower, because the enemy did not have a comparable amount of artillery, armored vehicles, and even more so aviation. Their leaders often complained about this, in particular, Igor Girkin (Strelkov). For example, breaking through from Slavyansk, Girkin lost almost all of his armored vehicles: two tanks, two BMP-2s and one BMD-1. At the same time, two more tanks "strelkovtsy" were able to save and deliver to Donetsk.
After the defeat near Ilovaisk and the end of the 2014 campaign, which was unsuccessful for the Ukrainian army, President Petro Poroshenko announced the huge losses suffered by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “At 60-65% military equipment in the units that stood on the first lines in the conflict zone, was destroyed. There was nothing to defend ourselves with,” the head of state said. And this assessment is in many respects close to the conclusions of the IISS specialists. It should be noted that the Armed Forces of Ukraine suffered the most damage when they tried to take control of the border section in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions and came under fire from Russian artillery, which they fired with impunity from their territory.
Thus, The Military Balance data indicates that the Ukrainian military-industrial complex has not yet been able to restore the combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, lost during the war in Donbass. On the other hand, such huge losses are another indisputable evidence of the invasion of the regular Russian army into the territory of Ukraine and its active participation in the battles, because the irregular formations of the DPR and LPR, which were almost completely destroyed by August 20, 2014, simply had no forces. and the means to inflict such great damage on the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
By the way, the Russian army also suffered losses in armored vehicles and artillery, which can also be tracked according to The Military Balance reports. For example, in 2013, the RF Armed Forces had more than 2,800 tanks and another 18,000 units were in storage. But according to 2016 data, the number of tanks in the Russian armed forces decreased by 100 units, and 500 tanks were taken from warehouses. True, in 2016, 600 modernized T-72B3 tanks appeared at the disposal of the RF Armed Forces, which were not in the report for 2013, so we are most likely talking not so much about big losses how much about the technical re-equipment of the Russian army.
But the noticeable decline in artillery and the fleet of armored combat vehicles is difficult to explain only by rearmament and decommissioning of old models. So, in 2013, the RF Armed Forces had more than 7360 AFVs, and in 2016 - already 5400, with the most lost BMP-1 and BMP-2 - a total of 1500 pieces. At the same time, the warehouses where 8500 BMP-1 and BMP-2 are stored remained untouched. As for cannon and rocket artillery, The Military Balance for 2013 indicates the figure of 5436+ units, and in 2016 - already 4180+. Apparently, the Ukrainian army did not remain in debt at all, especially with regard to artillery duels. However, unlike the Ukrainian one, the Russian military-industrial complex can easily make up for all the damage caused, and maybe it has already made up for it, if we take into account the rather numerous facts of the destruction of Russian tanks during the fighting in the Donbass.
