Ukrainian participants of rail blockade of LPR blow up tracks near Sentianivka, Luhansk says
LUHANSK. Jan 30 (Interfax) - Ukrainian radicals have blown up railway tracks in the "grey zone" in Donbas, a spokesperson for the People's Militia in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) said.
"Those who blocked freight traffic on the railway line between Sentianivka and Shypylove have blown up the track in the 'grey zone' near Sentianivka," the statement said.
The scale of damage is not known yet, but "it is doubtful that the protestors will let repair crews onto this part of the railroad," the spokesman said.
One rail has been damaged, there is no service on this stretch at the moment, a spokeswoman for the National Police Main Directorate in Luhansk, Tatiana Pohukai, said later.
"Today, on January 30 at 09:30 a.m., the Popasna police department received a report from an on-duty officer for the Shepilove station of the Donetsk railway, about damage found on the stretch of railway between Svitlanove and Shepilove, 42nd kilometer, marker 7-8. As a result of the railway damage no train movement is possible to and from the area controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces," Pohukai wrote on her Facebook page.
Popasna police investigators travelled to the scene to document the damage - 1.15 meters cut out of the track, the spokeswoman said. The incident is to be classified shortly.
For his part, Ukrainian parliamentarian Semen Semenchenko, a participant in the rail blockade in Luhansk region, wrote on his Facebook page that some "unknown people dismantled rails" within a kilometer from the blockade area in the "grey zone."
"Obviously, local patriots of Ukraine are tired of waiting for when the war is over and decided to cut funding for the invaders to bring its end closer. It could be a provocation, though. I have no other theory. At any rate, no one travels anywhere anymore on this line," the people's deputy wrote.
It was reported that on January 25 Donbas war veterans and Ukrainian parliamentarians blocked a section of the Luhansk-Lysychansk-Popasna railway between Horske and Zolote to cut off trade with the self-proclaimed republics. The blockade's outpost has been dubbed Bohdan Redoubt. On January 26 one more station, in Svitlanove, was also blocked.
On January 26 prosecutors opened a criminal inquiry into the blocking of the railway on the dividing line in the Luhansk region under Article 279 part one of the Ukrainian Criminal Code (blocking transport communications).
There are around 55 people in camouflage, including people's deputies Semenchenko, Taras Pastukh and Volodymyr Parasiuk, at the 41st kilometer of the railway line, Luhansk regional prosecutors' spokeswoman Hanna Zykova said. They have placed three wooden "hedgehogs" on the tracks and blocked the movement of goods bound for the breakaway part of the region, she said.
The protestors blocked empty railcars meant for coal transportation, Yuri Harbuz, head of the Luhansk regional military-civilian administration, wrote on Facebook. The protest poses a threat to national energy security, he said.
