Two Ukrainian soldiers killed over bloody weekend in Donbas:
Two Ukrainian military personnel were killed and four wounded over the weekend in the Donbas conflict zone where Russian-backed separatists control portions of the country's two easternmost regions.
A female combat medic was killed on February 1 near the front-line town of Novotoshkivske in the Luhansk region, the military headquarters said in a daily war update.
Sergeant Klavdia Sytnyk, 33, came under fire while delivering medical supplies to a combat post and sustained fatal shrapnel wounds to her chest.
The native of the Kharkiv region worked as a civilian paramedic before enlisting in the military in February 2017, according to her combat unit.
Another service member was killed on February 2 as Ukrainian forces faced 15 attacks over a 24-hour period, almost twice the number recorded the previous day, the military said.
More than 110 Ukrainian service members were killed in 2019.
The conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists that started in April 2014 has killed more than 13,000 people.
Hostilities in the Donbas erupted shortly after Russia forcibly annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a move that has not been recognized by the international community.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has vowed to end the war, which has internally uprooted 1.5 million people from their homes and caused a humanitarian crisis in the easternmost regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The Kremlin officially denies that it is a party to the war and describes the events in the Donbas as "an internal Ukrainian conflict."
Numerous cease-fires have failed to bring lasting peace to Europe's only shooting war. (UNIAN, Interfax, Hromadske, and Censor)
This ends our live blogging for February 2. Be sure to check back tomorrow for our continuing coverage.
Here is today's map of the security situation in eastern Ukraine, according to the National Security and Defense Council (click to enlarge):
