Over the past day three Ukrainian fighters and two civilians -- including a 5-month old girl -- have been injured in Donbas, said Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko.
He added that medium intensity fighting continues in Luhansk.
The situation is stable in Donetsk Oblast, around Svitlodarsk and Horlivka in particular. According to Lysenko, separatists didn’t use heavy artillery there once. At the same time he emphasized the activation of snipers, who have shot at field fortifications on the Ukrainian side.
Lysenko says that separatists continue to shell the Ukrainian positions close to Mariupol.
Saakashvili Trains Alongside Odesa Police
The governor of Ukraine's Odesa region, former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, took part in police training exercises led by U.S. instructors in the Black Sea city on August 18. Saakashvili has played a highly public role since taking over as governor in May, mingling with locals and promising to make sweeping changes to stamp out corruption. (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
Fresh Fighting In Pisky, Eastern Ukraine
Ukrainian government forces traded fire with Russian-backed separatists in the village of Pisky, near the rebel-held city of Donetsk, late on August 18. The clash took place amid escalating violence in recent days along the front lines in eastern Ukraine (RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service)
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission, after analyzing shelling in Sartana village, close to port city of Mariupol, has concluded that on August 16 it was shelled from the east.
Observers, who studied 11 impact sites, think that they were caused by 122-mm or 152-mm artillery rounds that were “mostly” fired from the east where separatist positions are located. Such artillery is banned under the Minsk agreements.
Two people died in the Sartana shelling. Doctors also had to amputate a 10-year old girl’s foot.
That wraps up our Ukraine Live Blog for August 18, 2015.