A Ukrainian forces serviceman walks in Mariinka, on the front line with Russian-backed separatists, in the Donetsk region, on February 7, 2022. (Photo: ALEKSEY FILIPPOV/AFP via Getty Images)
Ukrainian and US officials have said a vehicle explosion in a Russian-backed separatist stronghold was a staged attack designed to stoke tensions in eastern Ukraine.
A video from the city of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine showed a fire in a parking lot and a severely damaged military vehicle near the headquarters of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), one of the country’s controlled areas. by Russian-backed separatists.
An official channel of the DPR said that “around 19:00, a car was blown up in the parking lot near the Government House building. The shock wave was heard throughout the city. The Ministry of Emergency Situations went to the site of the explosion.
Images and video showed emergency services at the scene and a badly damaged vehicle that CNN identified as a Russian-made jeep. There is no way to verify what caused the damage to the vehicle or the fire.
“We think this is a setup and a provocation,” Anton Gerashchenko, adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Minister, told CNN on WhatsApp. A US State Department spokesman described it as a “false flag operation” and said incidents such as the vehicle explosion and calls by separatist leaders to evacuate over alleged Ukrainian aggression represented “further attempts to hide through lies and misinformation that Russia is the aggressor in this conflict.
More context: US officials and other Western leaders have repeatedly warned that Russia may stoke violence in eastern Ukraine to create a pretext for a full-blown invasion.
This comes after Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) monitors reported a sharp escalation in ceasefire violations along the front lines dividing Ukrainian and separatist forces into eastern Ukraine from this Thursday.
The OSCE said that as a result of “reports of civilian casualties and damage to civilian property and infrastructure sites in the last 24 hours, the Mission redirected several of its patrols in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including a kindergarten and a railway station in Stanitsya Luhanska (controlled by the government, 16 km northeast of Luhansk)”.
Both parties to the conflict accused each other Thursday of ceasefire violations.
The war in eastern Ukraine began in 2014 and has claimed the lives of more than 14,000 people. Heavy fighting in 2014 and 2015 left parts of the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk in the hands of Russian-backed separatists. The DPR is not recognized by any government, including the Russian one.