22 January, 2023
last edits 28 Jan.
Introduction: Having looked at the shelling of Donetsk in December in great detail, and September in middling detail, I wanted to look back at the beginning of this year's shelling. I had totally focused on readings in Donetsk city, where I can easily place most impacts using street views, and where the hard pavement and walls make them easy to read. But there weren't so many of these early on, and other questions came up along the way, expanding my scope in time and space, and into who was documenting it all and how.
It turned into a pretty deep dive, mostly on Telegram and in reports of the OSCE's Special Monitoring Mission, that I'm still trying to surface from. It had to split into two parts, then three, then just 2 but quite long, with the remainder to go elsewhere ... I had to learn things I just didn't know, and I decided to share most of it as usual, but edited down into a hopefully readable form.
Here I'll relate and analyze incidents and reports from the 18th of February - a week before the Russian invasion - back to early November of 2021. Did you know the people in Donetsk were getting shelled back then? These attacks set up a humanitarian catastrophe in the region regarding access water, heat, and electricity and, in some cases, to intact homes and to life itself. Ballistic readings, including some of my own (but not as many or as detailed as I'd like), suggesting these attacks came from Ukrainian-held areas.
Then I share some obnoxious Ukrainian and supportive sources pointing the other way, on clearly ideological grounds, blaming the Russians, the DPR and LPR for shelling themselves or their own. That's countered with some pretty visuals free but logical and detailed relation of Ukraine's foreign-backed terrorism again trying to make life unlivable in the breakaway republics.
Monitoring a Year-Long buildup to War
For some time before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, we were told it was planned, if not imminent. In fact, we were told that Russia had invaded already back in 2014, but that was a figure of speech. As they set to actually doing it, we were told the move was unprovoked, based on Russian greed for empire and greased by Russian disinformation about imaginary Nazis and some NATO "coup". We also heard that it might be sparked by a Russian false-flag event, like an attack on civilians in the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples' Republics (DPR and LPR) the Russians would fake or carry out for real, just to accuse Ukraine and have a pretext to roll in.
In contrast, Russia and its DPR/LPR allies reported reasons that they could hardly have fabricated. As explained below, there was an actual Ukrainian troop and weapons buildup around them in the divided Donbass region. There were various signals of hostility including, by late January, new shelling attacks that, as I'll show, tend to use Western-supplied weapons and to originate from Ukrainian-held areas. Claiming to believe this threat, DPR and LPR authorities ordered mass mobilization of fighting-age men, and they started sending many women and children off on busses to the east, for their safety. Was that all part of an elaborate ruse, as Kyiv would have us believe?
These immediate conditions were laid well in advance, and surely by a plan. Almost a year before, on 24 March, 2021, Ukraine's president Zelensky issued a decree that might offer some clues about this plan. This decree made effective a recent decision of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council titled: "On the Strategy of De-occupation and Re-integration of the Temporarily Occupied Territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol." The decision itself and what it says is important, but if it's public, I haven't seen it. Here, I'll cite Zelenskyy's explanation for implementing it.
The events of early 2014 left Russia "temporarily occupying" Crimea with about zero dead, according to a democratic vote Ukraine just rejects, and all legally in the minds of many. But in Zelenskyy's decree, the need to counter "the Russian Federation's armed aggression" there was evident. Ukraine offered "a set of measures of a diplomatic, military," and other natures, to re-exert their authority over Crimea and Sevastopol. They planned to engage with "civil society" groups inside the Russian-majority Crimea, in "preparation" for a peaceful transition, like the one that happened in 2014 but all in reverse. But in case that didn't happen with their ten people in Crimea, as it wouldn't... "Ukraine reserves the right to apply all means" to this end. Military measures were included, and would probably become the main ones used. Therefore:
"23. The prerequisites for the reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory" include creating all-new "democratic institutions," something about Ukraine's economy and European living standards, and perhaps key: "strengthening the state's defense capabilities, improving the capabilities and development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, other military formations formed in accordance with the laws of Ukraine [Azov Battallion, Tornado, et al.], law enforcement agencies, development of the defense-industrial complex."
"79. Ukraine provides special training for [the above] ... to perform the tasks assigned to them, taking into account the peculiarities of the processes of de-occupation and reintegration, as well as using the experience of Ukrainian citizens who participated in international peacekeeping operations and security." He might refer to Ukraine's "Anti-Terror Operation" - their civil war in the Donbass thus far. It can be "peculiar" stuff.
To physically "de-occupy" Crimea would not happen with some lobbying and promises of prosperity. It would first require ignoring the republic's autonomous will to be part of Russia instead, as overwhelmingly expressed in the 2014 ballot, along with a mass unwillingness to oppose that will. Mass defection, "actions and inactions" that allowed a nearly bloodless transition are called treason by Ukraine and - per this decree of Zelemnskyy - they hope to punish that treason very widely as part of their re-integration.
But first, they'd have to fight and kill the Russian "occupiers" and the people of Crimea, by and large, who invited them and who would fight beside them. So from Ukraine's point of view, this was a strategy towards civil war on its own people. And from the other side, it reads like a plan for invasion and occupation. That's an alarming development. It would violate the spirit and terms of the Minsk accords, for one thing. But Ukraine and its supporters now admit to violating this the whole time; they just used the temporary peace to rebuild their armed forces for an eventual violation-to-victory.
There's no mention in the March decree of the Donbass as a target, nor of specific plans at all, which were posed as still undecided. But from a government so willing to fight its own people, there may have been a less visible plan to invade and de-Russify the larger DPR and LPR as well. In fact, the talk of a Crimean focus could have been a distraction from Kyiv's real plans. Either task, and especially both, would take a lot of troops and weapons Ukraine didn't have in 2015, but had built up since. And interestingly, it was soon after this decree - March (probably second half) and April of 2021 - that sporadic shelling of the Donbass resumed.
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This chart reflects President Zelenskyy initiating two ceasefires in Donbass after coming to office in May 2019. A "Harvest" ceasefire that summer gave way to renewed shelling within weeks, and that lasted for almost a year. Then another ceasefire - "additional measures" - held. For a while, everyone on the Ukrainian side seemed to agree to save their ammo in a prolonged silence regime lasting, according to the chart, for some 8 months (August 2020 to March 2021). It's as if some military pregnancy was unfolding in seclusion, and with new attacks from April onward, it's like the birthed creature was starting to crawl.
But Ukraine may have led this trend. A report of 22 February notes: "At one heavy weapons holding area in a government-controlled area of Luhansk region ... The Mission noted that no weapons were present, as during the previous visit to this site on 24 August 2021." Were they fielding whole warehouses of weapons already by late August? If so, it's curious how the SMM report covering 24 August failed to mention this development.
On 13 December: "At three heavy weapons holding areas in government-controlled areas of Donetsk region ... The SMM noted that 15 self-propelled howitzers (2S1) and 13 towed howitzers (D-30) were missing since its last visits to these sites on 3 and 29 September 2021, respectively." (PDF) The missing units were likely already seen on the 6th: "Beyond withdrawal lines but outside designated storage sites, the Mission saw 30 tanks and 17 howitzers at two railway stations in government-controlled areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions." 15 Self-propelled howitzer (2S1 Gvozdika, 122mm) were spotted "at a railway station in Rubizhne." (PDF)
International Crisis Group noted later "reports that the OSCE Missions were denied access to the war zone by armed formations. This means that with the invasion drawing closer, the visibility of what was going on in the Donbas conflict zone declined." Perhaps both sides feared that someone in the mission was spying, or just that military preparations shouldn't be published. The whole documentation regime was premised on no active hostilities to expose. But that was never fully the case, and increasingly, the mission's work was at odds with actors on both sides preparing for war. Shortly after the Russian invasion, the SMM would formally disband, but things were at a whole different level already.
1 November, 2021: Rehabilitated Homes Attacked
Noting the shelling of 2021 late in the game, I checked if my amateur ballistic analysis might add anything. I just scratched the surface at the later part of it, for some incidents outside Donetsk city, which is where I usually limit my serious analysis ... but I can start with one attack with some visuals that is inside the city.
Donbass Reshaet reported on 2 November:
"Ukrainian Armed Forces damaged four houses in the north of Donetsk with mines [shells]. Last night, Ukrainian militants shelled Stratonavtov Street and the adjacent village of Veseloe where a mine broke through the roof of house No. 73 on Sadovaya Street. ... (in Donetsk) Three apartment buildings were damaged - one 5-storey and two 2-storey."
"In a five-story building, a mine broke through the concrete roof, 15 window blocks were damaged. In one two-story building, slate was cut with fragments - there are about 40 holes in the roof. A total of 10 windows were also damaged in two-story buildings. In addition, two garages were broken and the gas pipeline was damaged in three places."
During the shelling, there were about a dozen families in the five-story building, including two minor children.
As a representative of the administration of the Kievsky district of Donetsk told the Donbass channel, these houses have been restored after shelling three times already. The five-story building began to be occupied two weeks ago. Repairs are also being completed in the affected two-story buildings." (luckily no one had moved in yet)
No one was killed or seriously hurt in this attack, but what message does this send? "We wreck your homes as soon as you rebuild them from the last wrecking. You cannot live here in safety anymore."
Reports give and/or show the addresses 123 and 139 on Stratonavtov Street. 123 is at 48.0593004,37.7366161 and 139 (by labels and deduction) is a long block or so east, the last of 3 such buildings. (Note: the numbers there don't seem to make sense.) Google Maps has a 2011 street view of the south faces, looking quite different. Another 2-story block damaged is probably one of those next to 139.
This is northern Kyivsky district, quite near the battered airport that marks the front line. Both buildings we see are lightly or moderately damaged on what seems to be the north side (where satellite views hardly ever help), with high, scattered fragments from nearby impacts = partly from the north. The roof hit to 123 is on the west end: I don't see much of a pattern to suggest the direction, but the shell held as if coming from the north or northwest makes sense (the edge there seems to have an appearance like a serrated knife, maybe from dense fragmentation).
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Investigation photos from the DPR Representative Office in the JCCC (Joint Centre for Control and Coordination on ceasefire and stabilization of the demarcation line) were published by DPR Online. One impact is shown at right, read as northwest origin. (see there also for "serrated" view)
American expat journalist Patrick Lancaster posted a video - Ukraine War Attacks Increase As Newly Renovated Apartments Hit By Shelling - filming from the area, where he says 16 122mm mortar shells landed. He shows at least 7 of the impacts, and interviews the locals. Oleg told him how another shell or 2 destroyed the roof of a 2-story building that was just repaired, but that people hadn't moved into yet. Another shell hit just inches from a gas pipeline, leaving a crater (see below). Oleg thinks the shell came from a certain direction (gestured), and the arc of fragmentation marks on the fence agree fairly well. As visible as the pattern is, the POSSIBLE peak of the arc (vertical red line) suggests a similar trajectory. With a fuller view, maybe we'd see the peak of the arc is more to the right, or more like Oleg said.
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In this video report, Lancaster mentions recent drone attacks against DRP troops (admitted by Ukraine, publishing videos) and another drone strike that injured civilians in Gorlovka. And he notes the absence of OSCE investigators at the scene, calling it a common occurrence. DPR inspectors with the JCCC are there, as usual, documenting everything.
See also on the attack: https://t.me/TK_Union/4852 - https://t.me/TK_Union/4836 - https://t.me/donbassr/7574 - another JCCC photo:
... then a final respite ...
Ozeryanovka is about 15km north of Horlivka. The story as told: at 7:50 am, 18 shells of 120mm caliber landed in the village, leading to damages unspecified past damaging a power line, cutting to power to many locals. After some patches, just 208 people still lacked electricity 3 hours later. (sources: https://t.me/donbassr/7825 - https://t.me/TK_Union/4960 - https://t.me/dnronline/54594)
The OSCE's 11 November report (PDF) does note: "At a checkpoint near Horlivka ...a member of the armed formations denied the Mission passage south towards Ozerianivka ... citing a “lack of notification from superiors”." So the SMM didn't get to check any of these craters themselves. Huh. One wonders where they were when homes were shelled in Donetsk a week earlier.
There were probably other reported attacks I didn't run across in my scrolling, but probably not many. Recall the OSCE's noted pause in shelling during January, after a downturn in December, but before that massive increase in February just ahead of the Russian invasion. As we'll see, even January wasn't all quiet, but there seem to be a relative lack of reports until the last week. Interestingly, it was on 1 December that, as US News reported, "Russia accused Ukraine on Wednesday of deploying half of its army or 125,000 troops to Donbass" with imminent plans, they feared, to attack the Peoples' Republics. Kyiv had no immediate reply to the charges, but Russian forces started massing near the border and the provocative shelling fell off soon thereafter, for one thing.
29 January: Attack on Yelenovka Electric Station
24 January: DPR Defense Minister Eduard Basurin told journalists he was alarmed by renewed Ukrainian military preparations on their border. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday/36
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Yelenovka (or Olenivka) is just south of western Donetsk city, right at the front line as it then stood. Plant coordinates: 47.8249132,37.6368912. Lancaster shows damage at a corner on the west side, deciding the shell could only be hit from the north or west where the frontline lies just over 1 km distant. By satellite views, the "west" side faces northwest (or WNW), with the impacted corner facing north, accepting fire from NNE to WNW (if the roof needs cleared - otherwise from any direction). By this, mapped out as below, Donetsk cannot be excluded. due north to due NW mapped below for reference.
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There's no clear enough pattern to say much except that both inner walls are marked pretty equally by fireball and fragments, at a decent height compared to the nearby impact, so the forward direction is mainly into that corner or to the south. That's an origin mostly from the north, likely a bit from the west, probably not at all from the east. Considering western make of weapon, motive and precedent, NNW to Marinka seems the best place to look.
The damaged transformer is on the southeast side of the building and was probably hit with mid-level side-spraying fragments.
The OSCE's SMM, in a report covering the 29th and 30th, mapped low-intensity ceasefire violations mostly inside the DPR border. One yellow dot is mapped on the border around Yelenovka, but nothing about this attack is mentioned in the report text, or in the table of violations (which the map is supposed to reflect). They had a station in government-controlled Berezove, 7km SW of Yelenovka, but it only observed 8 explosions, recorded from 3:22 to 3:42 am, they think 2-4km to the SE. Was the 7km NE just too far to hear? Perhaps. 60mm doesn't sound very powerful. But did no one phone it in to them? Or were they just not interested in an attack on civilian infrastructure launched with western weapons from Ukrainian areas? Their next report issued on 1 February doesn't mention any follow-up on this case either.
To 17 February
Any Ukrainian moves on the Donbass would be planned out, and the United States would probably be informed about the plans, one way or another. But they only spoke of wicked Russian plots. On 3 February, the Washington Post passed on a Biden administration warning: “Russia has developed a plan, approved at high levels in Moscow, to create a pretext for invading Ukraine by falsely pinning an attack on Ukrainian forces that could involve alleged casualties not only in eastern Ukraine but also in Russia.” Then, as Jacques Baud noted, "On 11th February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack the Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show."
OSCE reports reflect serious shelling in the region commenced on or by the 14th of February, increased sharply and grew more widespread on the 16th, and turned heavier yet from the 18th to the 22nd. The maps show some shelling on the Ukrainian side, but that was likely defensive and provoked by the much greater shelling from the Ukrainian side. I'm citing for now a summary article withe the following graphics. How Ukraine started shelling the Donbass in the lead-to Russia's invasion of Ukraine - Seemorerocks (also the original source for the above chart)
As tracked from inside: The JCCC issued early shelling reports from at least 22 January, for a time sporadically; some days, a few RPG shells were fired in, sometimes a mortar shell or two as well, and sometimes nothing. The 6th of February was a bit worse than usual:
"The representative office of the Donetsk People's Republic in the JCCC reports that over the past 24 hours, the AFU violated the indefinite ceasefire six times. On the territory of the DPR, in violation of the Minsk agreements, as well as the ceasefire agreements, the following weapons were used: Donetsk direction: 120 mm mortars - 1 time (2 mines); AGS - 1 time (5 grenades). Mariupol direction: RPG / LNG - 2 times (8 grenades); AGS - 2 times (82 grenades). Spartak, Donetsk, Sosnovskoye and Oktyabr were under fire from the VFU." (DPR Online)
Early on 16 February it was about the same but, as noted, shelling escalated that day and later that morning the JCCC noted an escalation - an additional 42 grenades and 20 mortar shells fired in the Donetsk and Mariupol directions. From there, ceasefire violation talk ends and it's just shooting every day, with updates every few hours. On 17 February, between 8:25 and 14:45 they reported: 82mm mortar shells: 55 - 120mm mortar: 12 - AGS grenades: 78 - LNG grenades: 8 - RPG grenades: 10 - anti-tank missile 1. (sources: https://t.me/dnronline/57500 - https://t.me/dnronline/57513 - https://t.me/dnronline/57516 - https://t.me/dnronline/57527).
17 February Kindergarten Attack
18 February: Two Electrical Substations Attacked
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Deniers decry a humanitarian catastrophe in Donbass
Former spokesperson for president Zelensky, Iuliia Mendel, on Twitter (24 March): "Only in Donetsk region 200 thousand people do not have access to drinking water due to the military actions of the Russians. Now there is a threat that in the next few days the Donetsk region may be disconnected from water supply at whole." Also by the Russians?
Self-described journalist Zarina Zabrisky, onTwitter: #Humanitarian crisis. In #Donetsk region, 11 settlements remain without water after #Russian shelling of infrastructure.
Ukraine's Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security - SPRAVDI, 12 May on Telegram, bemoaned the conditions engineered in the breakaway areas: "At the same time, in the occupied areas of the Donetsk region and in Donetsk itself, the self-proclaimed authorities have not been able to establish water supply for several months. ... In Donetsk, drinking water was initially provided only for a few hours according to the schedule. Then in some areas of the city it simply ended. Technical water, unsuitable for drinking and cooking, is transported in tanks. But even behind it there are queues. It comes to the point that people collect rainwater."
SPRAVDI had already decided, with no explained reasoning, "The occupiers, like real barbarians, are trying to cut off electricity and dehydrate the peaceful cities of Ukraine. Let's give a worthy rebuff to the enemy!" (24 March) That might have only referred to those in Ukrainian-held ("peaceful") areas, some of which also faced shortages from the same cause, but which were mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians under occupation anyway. Maybe SPRAVDI is beyond even pretending to care about the people of the DPR and LPR.
Recall that cutting water supply to Crimea was one of the first things Ukraine did after their 2014 vote to become Russian, damming the Dniepr River. People managed to drink, but agriculture, etc. suffered as it remained blocked for 8 years, until Russian troops finally conquered the area of the dam and blew it up in 2022. (Reuters) Another thing Ukrain did, with a bit more deniability but over and over and followed by celebrations, was to cut their electricity (2014: New York Times) - 2015: AFP via Yahoo News).
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Also on the 21st Donetsk mayor Aleksei Kulemzin on Telegram: "As a result of today's shelling of the village. mine "Trudovskaya" there was a shutdown of 6 transformer substations. Residents of 814 houses of the private sector, an outpatient clinic on the street "Renaissance" were left without electricity."
"As a result of the shelling of the Petrovsky district by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, shrapnel damage to a low-pressure gas pipeline was recorded. 35 private sector houses were left without gas supply along the streets: Amosov, Lutugin, Roborovsky, Krasnaya Zvezda."
22 Feb. "As a result of shelling by Ukrainian security forces, a transformer located in the gray zone, west of the village of Vasilyevka, Yasinovatsky district, was damaged. As a result, the 1st rise of the South-Donbass water conduit was stopped, which led to the cessation of water supply in the Olenovka village." https://t.me/kulemzin_donetsk/3337
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The consequences of the use of 122 mm artillery (https://t.me/DNR_SCKK/6079) by the VFU at the Severny waterworks in Donetsk. (photos - one inset)
25 Feb. As a result of shelling from the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 3rd lift of the Seversky Donets-Donbass channel was de-energized. The pumps have stopped. - Representation of the DPR in the JCCC. https://t.me/donbassr/13066
Tass, 28 Feb: "The central water supply station in Donetsk was damaged and 19 boilers lost power as a result of shelling by Ukraine, city Mayor Alexey Kulemzin said on Monday. Some areas in the city lost their heating supply, he said on Telegram."
28 Feb. "Ukrainian militants shelled the area of the filtration station No. 2 of the Water of Donbass checkpoint and the village of Pobeda. This was stated by the official representative of the NM DNR Eduard Basurin. In addition, according to him, as a result of the shelling of Dokuchaevsk, a 6 kW overhead power line, distribution and transformer substations were damaged. About 1000 subscribers were left without electricity. The water conduit was also damaged, due to which 32 thousand subscribers and 21 boiler houses were left without water supply." https://t.me/donbassr/13599
By March 3, the mayor was issuing periodic messages to residents of the Kirovsky, Kuibyshevsky, Leninsky and Petrovsky districts of the city had to receive water their pipes no longer delivered, at given times and places. These notices continued into the spring and summer, later including more districts and reportedly with greater rationing.
12 March The reserve reservoir, which currently feeds Donetsk, has become shallow, the water in it remains for about a month, after which the water in the city can be completely turned off. https://t.me/militarydonetsk/7668
12 March "Vitaly Kizhaev, director general of the Water of Donbass state enterprise, told the Donbass decides channel that there is about a month left in the reserve reservoir." This was used since the 25 Feb. attack. "According to Kizhaev, in order to repair the power lines, it is necessary to request a silence regime from Ukraine, which is hardly feasible in the current conditions of aggravated hostilities. Therefore, there is only one way left - to free the territory through which the power line passes from the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and then repair it. “Besides the Seversky Donets-Donbass canal, we have no other sources of water supply,” Kizhaev emphasized." https://t.me/donbassr/15270
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Part 2 - will cover geolocated and ballistic analysis, just in Donetsk city limits and starting on 17 February and continuing through the Russian invasion, continuing to 12 March to show - in clearer and greater detail than I could here - how this contested shelling also came from the logical (enemy) side. Good news: it was already close to complete before I started on this separate part 1.
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