14:16 12.06.2015

Yatseniuk asks Foreign Ministry to inform OSCE and Contact Group of militants' pipeline shelling near Mariupol

2 min read
Yatseniuk asks Foreign Ministry to inform OSCE and Contact Group of militants' pipeline shelling near Mariupol

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk has instructed his country's Foreign Ministry to officially inform Ukraine's Western partners, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Trilateral Contact Group of what he described as a deliberate attack of the militants on a gas pipeline near the town of Mariupol.

"Pavlo Klimkin [Ukrainian foreign minister], I am asking you personally to inform our Western partners, the trilateral [contact] group and the OSCE about this latest violation of the so-called Minsk agreement by the Russian Federation and pro-Russian terrorists," Yatseniuk said at a government session on Friday.

Naftogaz Ukrainy head Andriy Kobolev, for his part, confirmed that the damage caused to this pipeline could not be accidental.

"The gas pipeline lies at a standard depth, and it was necessary to deliberately fire at it for a certain period of time in order to damage it even by such a powerful explosion," he said.

Ukrainian gas distributor Ukrtransgaz said on Friday it was forced to suspend gas supplies to Volnovakha, Mariupol and Berdyansk in order to repair a section of the Kramatorsk-Donetsk gas pipeline damaged by shelling.

Earlier on Friday, chief of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry's branch for the Donetsk region Vyacheslav Abroskin accused militants of firing mortars and damaging a gas pipeline in the Yasynuvata district, between the localities of Krasnohorivka and Novokalynove.

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