NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg says Russia has given more than 1,000 pieces of military hardware to the separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Dnepropetrovsk Region completes construction of fortifications on
border with Donbass
KIEV, June 19 (TASS) -- Ukraine's Dnepropetrovsk Region was the first
to complete the construction of fortification structures on the border with Donbass (the Donetsk and Lugansk regions), the region's head Valentin Reznichenko said Friday.
"I am grateful to all builders who: completed their work. The Dnepropetrovsk Region is a reliable shield of Ukraine," Ukrainian publication Segodnya quoted Reznichenko as saying.
The fortification structures 100 kilometers long consist of 27 facilities with strongholds and reinforcing obstacles, trenches and special entrenchments for hardware.
Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko said March 9 that Ukraine is preparing a deeply layered defense system in the country's east.
The press center of the headquarters of Kiev's military operation against eastern regions specified that there are plans to create two defensive lines "to prevent the enemy from penetrating Ukrainian territory."
"The bulk of work is some 1,500 kilometers of trenches, over 8,000 entrenchments for hardware, more than 4,000 dugouts and the construction of a 60-kilometer passive obstacle," the punitive operation's headquarters said.
Poroshenko said the overall cost of construction of all defensive structures on the disengagement line in Donbass totals 1 billion hryvnias (about $47 million).
The Ukrainian president also said all fortifications should be built by mid-July. The heads of two regions of Ukraine were even reprimanded for failure to meet the delivery date. Donetsk Region Governor Alexander Kikhtenko lost his post after the reprimand.