Moscow: Russia considered the situation in southeastern Ukraine very tense, which is a cause for deep concern, presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov said today.
?The situation is, in fact, extremely tense. So far we see no signs of the tension level easing. The provocations and the bombardments are becoming more and more intense?, the senior official told the media.
The head of the Kremlin press office refused to answer a question about the possibility of Russian forces becoming involved in the conflict in Donbass if the authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) people’s republics request assistance in relation to the escalation of the conflict.
The crisis in the contact line in that Ukrainian region worsened on February 17, when the authorities of those territories reported increased bombing by Kiev, which caused damage to several civil infrastructure facilities.
Henceforth, the heads of the RPD and RPL proclaimed the evacuation of their residents to Russia due to the growing threat of a possible increase in hostilities and declared general mobilization.
The head of the DPR, Denis Pushilin, stated that the situation has become critical in the last 24 hours and that residential areas in that territory are being attacked by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
He denounced that Kiev troops with heavy artillery, mortars, grenade launchers and tanks attacked several towns, including Donetsk and Gorlovka.
On the other hand, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) informed the TASS news agency that this Monday a projectile launched from the territory of Ukraine fell on a building belonging to the Russian border guard in the Rostov region, 150 meters from the territorial limit.
According to the FSB, there were no casualties and sappers are working at the scene.
Earlier, the Russian Investigative Committee reported that it initiated a criminal case for the launch of two projectiles on the territory of the Rostov region from Ukraine on February 19.
He indicated that on that day, around 05:00 local time, unidentified persons used a reactive rocket launcher system from the territory of Ukraine to bomb the border area of ??the Tarasovski district of the Rostov region.