Large Increase In Separatist Weaponry In The East — Polish Journalist

What You Need To Know:

✓ Heaviest shelling of Marinka since the beginning of the war; 
✓ UN reported that 28 died, including 9 civilians;
✓ No consensus that this is a beginning of a new summer offensive by the separatists but there is a large increase in separatist weaponry

“It was the heaviest shelling of Marinka since the beginning of the war,” Polish journalist Pawel Pieniazek told Hromadske. The neighboring town of Krasnohorivka was also heavily shelled, said Peiniazek.

On June 3, 2015 separatist forces launched an attack on Ukrainian government positions in Marinka, an East Ukrainian town which lies on the front line. According to the UN, 28 people died in as a result of the attack, including 9 civilians.

The locals were in shock, according to Pieniazek, as the situation in Marinka was calm just last month. Pieniazek told Hromadske that some of the people he spoke to in the West of the town could only lie on the ground because they did not have basements to hide in.

According to Pieniazek, the Ukrainian soldiers he spoke with were divided on whether this marked the beginning of a new summer offensive but agreed that there was a large increase in separatist weaponry. One soldier who was from Marinka and had been there when it was under separatist control last year, told Pieniazek that he had never seen that many tanks and that they many of them were new.

Hromadske International's Nataliya Gumenyuk and Ian Bateson spoke with Pawel Pieniazek on June 7, 2015.