Four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two others wounded in a bombing in eastern Ukraine, Kiev announced on Friday March 26, the heaviest daily death toll since 2019 in the region.
This brings the total number of Ukrainian soldiers who have died at the front lines since the start of the year to 19.
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Pro-Russian separatists "
again violated the ceasefire and fired at Ukrainian positions
" with mortars, grenade launchers and large caliber machine guns near the village of Choumy, some 30 kilometers north of Donetsk , the Ukrainian army said in a statement.
“
Unfortunately, we have observed an escalation since the beginning of the year,
” lamented President Volodymyr Zelensky in the evening, while offering his condolences to the relatives of the soldiers killed.
“
We cannot allow the peace process to be pushed back,
” he added.
The chief of staff of the Ukrainian army left by plane for the scene of the tragedy in order to "
clarify all the circumstances
", underlined Volodymyr Zelensky.
50 Ukrainian soldiers killed in 2020
He announced that he would "
soon
" discuss tensions in the east with Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, Berlin and Paris playing the role of mediators between Kiev and Moscow .
Despite its denials, the Kremlin is widely regarded as the military and economic godfather of the separatists.
Friday's record, unprecedented since August 2019, seems to spell the end of the fragile truce that had more or less held since last July.
Ukraine reported 50 soldiers killed in its ranks in 2020, up from 100 the year before.
Eastern Ukraine has been in the throes of a war with separatists since 2014 that has left more than 13,000 dead and nearly a million and a half displaced.
However, the intensity of the violence has dropped considerably since the Minsk peace accords concluded in 2015.