One Ukrainian soldier was killed and three were wounded in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine after Russia-backed separatists opened fire with “grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, sniper rifles, and small arms,” according to the Ukrainian military.
All the casualties took place in the army’s “north” operational and tactical group, it said.
Sixty-six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the first seven months of this year, according to Censor.net, a Ukrainian news portal.
After getting elected in April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for a four-way meeting with Russia, Germany, and France – known as the Normandy format – to revive peace talks with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin.
Moscow has said there is interest in renewing peace discussions, but no date has been set.
More than 13,000 people have been killed in the Donbas conflict since April 2014, when Russian-backed separatists took up arms against government forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Russia’s invasion and annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula preceded the armed uprising that prompted the European Union, United States, and other countries to impose sanctions on Russia.
An additional 1.5 million people have been internally displaced, the largest migration of people on the European continent since World War II.
Russia denies involvement in the Donbas conflict and has portrayed events there as Ukraine’s “internal” affair.
