The event that Washington, Kiev and Brussels have been piling on Moscow about is an incident on Mar. 26 in the village of Shumy, on the line of contact between the militias of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian Joint Forces Operation HQ claimed that “enemy” forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in Shumy with heavy mortar and machine gun fire killing four Ukrainian troops and wounding two others.
The DPR side denied that any of its forces had been involved in such an attack. “The JFO HQ reported four service members killed, two injured as a result of mortar fire coming from the DPR side in the vicinity of Shumy. We officially inform that our units in the area performed no firing tasks,” the DPR People’s Militia said in a statement, reported the Donetsk News Agency. The statement added that a militia unit was targeted from the direction of the Ukrainian brigade on the other side. “People’s Militia did not succumb to it and did not open retaliatory fire,” it said.