Spot Report by the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine: Armed man opens fire near SMM in Sakhanka
On 2 April, an SMM patrol composed of six members and two armoured vehicles was stationary (since 12:25) 50 metres west of the main Tsentralna street on the northern edge of “DPR”-controlled Sakhanka (24km north-east of Mariupol), in the parking lot of an uninhabited building. Three patrol members were outside the vehicles, and three were inside. At 13:00 an unmarked car (a beige Lada with Ukrainian licence plates) with three male passengers in military-style clothes moving north along the main street, reduced its speed in front of the uninhabited building, about 50 metres from the SMM. Then the driver opened his window and all of the passengers shouted loudly, in the Russian language, an insult towards the SMM. The driver then took an assault rifle (AK-47) from one of the passengers in the car, and holding the steering wheel with his knees, put the rifle through the open window, pointed it up into the air, and shot twice, without stopping the car, proceeding north towards the nearby “DPR”-controlled village of Uzhivka (formerly Leninske, 24km north-east of Mariupol).
The SMM left the scene after ten minutes and proceeded to the “DPR”-controlled village of Bezimenne (30km east of Mariupol), where at 13:25 it saw the same unmarked car parked in the centre of the village, but was not able to discern whether the two men inside were part of the group involved in the incident.
The SMM arrived to its base in Mariupol safely. The Mission informed the Joint Centre for Control and Co-ordination.