MOSCOW/KYIV. March 21 (Interfax) - Ukraine's claims that the Donbas militia allegedly sustained considerable casualties in an armed clash near the village of Vodyane on March 20 are false, the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) said.
"We have no fatal casualties. There are wounded [militiamen], but not many," Eduard Basurin of the DPR Defense Ministry told Interfax on Tuesday, declining to say exactly how many militiamen had been wounded.
Moreover, Basurin insisted that it was the Ukrainian armed forces that had sustained heavy losses near Vodyane.
"Eight of ten people on the Ukrainian side were killed," he said.
The press center of the headquarters of Kyiv's military operation in Donbas said earlier that eight DPR militiamen had been killed and another 16 wounded during an armed clash near the village of Vodyane in the Donetsk region's Volnovakha district on Monday.
The press center said on its Facebook page that, based on verified reports, "the adversary sustained considerable casualties" in the clash near Vodyane in the Mariupol sector.
"Based on reconnaissance data, eight people were killed and another 16 were wounded," it said.
The press center had reported before that two Ukrainian servicemen had been killed and seven others wounded in those events.