Kiev says all volunteer battalions withdrawn from Donbass

The press center of Kiev’s military operation in Donbass says there are no volunteer battalions in the zone of the operation. A statement on it is available on the press center’s page on Facebook.

“There are no volunteer battalions in the territory of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions” in the area of the military operation, the press office says in the statement.  It says the tasks in the area are allegedly “fulfilled by the subdivisions of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, military units, the law-enforcement, and other anti-terrorist forces,” the press center says.

As EADaily reported earlier, Eduard Basurin, the spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) Defense Ministry said on May 4 that the “nationalist battalions of Ukraine’s Armed Forces continue chaotic  shelling of the residential areas in the Kiev region (Donetsk), Sahanka and Shirokino settlements, deliberately destroying houses and communications of peaceful residents.”

Earlier, OSCE Special Monitoring Mission Head Ertugrul Apakan said the volunteer battalion fighters interfered with the activity of the OSCE observers in Shirokino on May 1.