The international investigation community Bellingcat December 21 is expected to release a report on the Donbas conflict titled Putin`s Undeclared War – Summer 2014. Strikes of Russian Artillery on Ukraine.
Bellingcat experts used publicly available satellite imagery to analyze hundreds of craters from shells in Donbas and revealed hundreds of artillery positions on the Russian territory close to the Ukrainian border
Based on the analysis, Bellingcat came to the following conclusions:
- Artillery units of the Russian armed forces conducted at least 149 individual attacks on Ukraine in the summer of 2014. At the same time, no less than 130 locations were revealed that are likely to have been used as artillery positions;
- 408 targets of artillery strikes on Ukraine`s territory are located within a range of Russian artillery systems and have a trajectory that crosses the Russian-Ukrainian border; 127 of them are located within 3 km from the Russian border;
- As evidenced by the craters, the Russian military launched a total of thousands of artillery shells on targets in Ukraine in the summer of 2014.
- The Bellingcat also noted that the actual number of shellings may be several times larger.
Also, the researchers concluded that the shellings from the territory of the Russian Federation began in early July 2014 and increased in frequency and scale in August and September, 2014. Thus, according to the report, these attacks can be considered as military operations of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.
Full report is due to be published December 21, 2016.
