No need to respond to provocative attacks if carried out from civilian objects – Kuchma

18:00, 06.06.2019 1 min read

Representative of Ukraine in the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), the second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma notes that the Ukrainian side should not respond to provocative attacks if they are carried out from civilian objects.

"There is one more problem - it is provocative shelling, when some military object enters either a kindergarten, or some residential house, or even a settlement, and it is shelling our territory. Please, tell us if we see what is happening, for example, from kindergarten, can we give an answer?" he said at a press conference in the Presidential Administration of Ukraine on Thursday.

Kuchma stressed that the return fire should always be given when hostilities take place in the relevant territory, where there are no settlements, etc.

Answering the clarifying question from journalists about whether the Ukrainian side's proposal not to respond to the shelling only when they are coming from civilian objects, Kuchma said: "Absolutely. When we clearly understand that this is provocative shelling."