REUTERS

This was announced by ATO speaker Andriy Lysenko at a briefing in Kyiv on Sunday, an UNIAN correspondent reported.

"In the past 24 hours, no Ukrainian soldiers were killed but four were wounded in military operations," he said.

Over the last day, Russian-backed militants shelled the positions of the Ukrainian forces in the ATO zone 50 times, attacking the Ukrainian troops with the weapons that were supposed to have been withdrawn from the front line under the Minsk accords.

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"The situation in the ATO zone remains tense, but it is under the Ukrainian military's control. In the past 24 hours, there were 50 attacks by militants along almost the entire line of contact. And a third of the attacks were made with the use of the weapons prohibited under the Minsk agreements - 120mm-caliber mortars and 122mm-caliber artillery systems," Lysenko said.

What is more, the enemy's tanks attacked Ukrainian troops near the village of Pisky three times over the period under review, he added.

Under agreements reached in Minsk on February 12, a ceasefire was supposed to come into effect in eastern Ukraine on February 15. However, the ceasefire was broken within an hour, and militants launched an attack on the government-held town of Debaltseve in Donetsk region, which they captured on February 18.

Since the agreements were signed, the militants have continued to attack the positions of the Ukrainian armed forces throughout the territory of Donbas, Ukraine’s military says.