18.04.2017 – Operational data of group “Information Resistance”

In the last 3 days the movement of cargo trucks and the deployment of military vehicles of the occupants in the front line on the territory controlled by the DNR and LNR were minimal, mainly in the framework of everyday life support of units of Russian-terrorist forces.

As an exception, the continuing strengthening of the grouping in the Petrovskiy district of Donetsk attracts attention. The arrival of up to 5 armored combat vehicles (of which at least two BMP-2) was recorded in the Tekstilshchik area, as well as the invaders’ reinforcement in the area of ​​Spartak. A motorized rifle unit (up to 70 men in 3 trucks Kamaz), heavy infantry armament (heavy mounted grenade launchers AGS, 2 automatic 82-mm mortars such as Vasilok, 1 anti-aircraft artillery system ZU-23-2, a pair of heavy mounted grenade launcher SPG) arrived in this area. These movements occur in the framework of the reinforcement that the IR group reported earlier. According to the plans of the command of the occupation troops, the units, that arrived, will operate on the site opposite from Opytnoe to Butovka and north (up to the highway junction on the Ring Road).

During the Easter holidays, the commandant’s control service in the 1st Army Corps DNR was elevated to a heavy security of service. In some settlements (Novoazovsk, Dokuchaevsk), Russian mercenaries from the Caucasus were involved in patrolling. As a result, there were conflicts with local militants who were on leave outside their units (mainly because of the abuse of alcohol).

In LNR the holidays were meaningful. In Khrustalny (former Krasny Luch), a local militant, after drinking alcoholic beverages, on the basis of domestic conflict, shot  from AK-74  his drinking companion from among local residents. Another militant, in a state of alcoholic intoxication, blew up grenades on the outskirts of Lugansk in honor of Easter (managed to blow up 2 grenades, after which he was detained by a patrol of terrorists). In Alchevsk, a massive fight was fixed between representatives of one of the motorized rifle unit of the 2nd Army Corps LNR and the Russian Cossacks. As a result, two wounded with knife wounds were hospitalized; one received a head injury as a result of a blow to the head by the orderly bin.

Russian curators in the DNR and LNR reported about the demand from the presidential administration of RF to intensify targeted information and propaganda work in Ukraine-controlled territories using militias controlled media, social networks, and agents in the front-line territories. The priority themes are successes and achievements in the implementation of the “Humanitarian program for the reunification of the people of Donbass,” a negative social and economic situation in the territory controlled by Kiev, the growing discontent with the Ukrainian soldiers in the actions of their command and the Ukrainian authorities as a whole. In order to realize this task, additional groups of “experts” from the Russian Federation are expected to arrive in Donetsk and Lugansk in the near future.

Among the leaders of the “Oplot TV” TV channel (broadcasting on the temporarily occupied territory of the Donetsk region and controlled by the leader of the DNR A. Zakharchenko), there is an increase in discontent due to the lack of financing of this media resource from the budget of the DNR. In particular, since July 2016, Oplot TV has been transferred to the state ownership of the DNR, but is not on the balance sheet of this formation and does not receive budgetary funding. Episodically, financial support is provided by “benefactors” from the Russian Federation, but these funds are extremely inadequate. In this regard, there are open refusals by the TV channel’s management to follow the instructions of the Ministry of Information of the DNR.

With the reduction of DNR funding from Russia, there is a sharp shortage of funds. In connection with this, in the occupied regions of the Donetsk region, in the last 2 months there have been delays in a number of social payments, in particular: assistance to families with children, pension payments (the tense situation is in Makeevka) and disability assistance payments ( a little part of people with disabilities received these payments).

In the context of “fight against smuggling in the LNR” declared by I.Plotnitsky, the so-called People’s Council of the LNR was instructed to increase responsibility for illegal movement and sale of goods of the excisable group. It was also instructed to consider the expediency of prohibiting the sale of tobacco products outside the boundaries of special trading establishments.

IR