[…] that relative calm is clearly fragile; Ukraine also claimed rebels fired some 90 mortar rounds at troops outside the city of Mariupol, one of the war’s tensest areas.
According to United Nations figures, more than 9,500 people have been killed in the fighting in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that began in April 2014, after Ukraine’s Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted by street protests and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.
The region, which is also known as Donbass, forms Ukraine’s Russian-speaking industrial heartland and many local residents on both sides of the front line are deeply distrustful of the new …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
