Ukraine’s Armed Forces say they are in full control of Shirokino in Donbass

Ukraine’s military have taken control of Shirokino village, in Donetsk region, Pavel Zhebrovsky, chief of the Donetsk regional military-civil administration, posted on Facebook.

“Good news! Ukraine’s military are in full control of Shirokino. They announced such news yesterday, when I visited them in the evening. Yet a month ago, the Ukraine forces controlled only half of the village,” he wrote.

As EADaily reported earlier, the present-day Shirokino is an abandoned village. In the period of fighting in the summer of 2014, Shirokino turned into a staging area of the Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance forces. Since then, Ukraine’s mass media have repeatedly blamed the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) units for allegedly shelling Mariupol. Local sources say Ukraine’s Armed Forces pulled military equipment into the territory of Shirokino and then shelled the unreliable district of Mariupol – Sartana densely populated by Greeks and the district Vostochny where anti-Maidan and anti-governmental sentiments run high.  Later, Shirokino has turned into a battlefield of the sabotage and reconnaissance groups from Ukraine and DPR. Neither Ukrainians nor militia had been in the village on a permanent basis, but since July 2015 the sabotage and reconnaissance groups from Ukraine and DPR have been making raids there to oust each other.

In February, the armed units of the DPR adopted a decision not to enter the territory of Shirokino. Waiting for a few days, the Ukraine command adopted a decision to send army units, not raiders, to Shirokino. The military took the abandoned village. Afterwards, the press-officers and the Ukrainian media reported about “liberation of Shirokino.”