An apartment damaged by a direct shell hit on a residential building in Gorlovka. File photoDONETSK, Apr 5Ukrainian troops on Tuesday opened fire on Gorlovka in the Donetsk People's Republic from a grenade launcher, as well as small arms, the republic's representative office in the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire (JCCC) reports. According to the department, published on the Telegram channel, the shelling was recorded 19.10 Moscow time, 29 grenades were fired from an automatic heavy grenade launcher (AGS) in Gorlovka, small arms were also used.A Hurricane shell fell into the garden of a resident of Kirovsk in the LPRThe village of Gorlovka has been under the control of the Donetsk People's Republic since 2014, located 50 kilometers north of Donetsk. On the territory of the city there are coal mining enterprises and the chemical concern «Stirol». The most frequently shelled areas of Gorlovka at the moment are the village of Zaitsevo and the villages of mines named after Gagarin and «6/7» located on the outskirts of the city. Before the start of the conflict in Donbass, the population of Gorlovka numbered more than 250 thousand people. Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine on February 24. President Vladimir Putin called its goal «the protection of people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.» For this, according to him, it is planned to carry out «demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine», to bring to justice all war criminals responsible for «bloody crimes against civilians» in Donbass. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces strike only at military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops and , on March 25, completed the main tasks of the first stage — significantly reduced the combat potential of Ukraine. The main goal in the Russian military department was called the liberation of Donbass.
