Senior UN Human Rights Official Starts Visit to Kiev, Conflict-Torn Donbass

Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Simonovic, began a six-day visit to Ukraine, where he will be visiting both Kiev and parts of Donbass, according to the UN human rights agency.

UNITED NATIONS (Sputnik) — The UN's Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic on Monday began a six-day visit to Kiev and conflict-torn eastern parts of the country, the UN human rights agency said.

"Today, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Simonovic, has begun a 6 day visit to Ukraine, where he will be visiting both Kiev and parts of the east," the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a statement published on its website.

Simonovic's visit "will provide an opportunity to assess the human rights situation" in Ukraine ahead of the Human Rights Council's dialogue on human rights in the country, scheduled for September 29 in Geneva, the OHCHR said.

A UN report on human rights in Ukraine, which was published on September 8, said that casualties in Donbas, the location of the military conflict launched by Kiev against local independence supporters, have doubled in the past three months, mostly due to heavy weapons shelling.

In early September, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the ceasefire in eastern Ukraine was being observed, signifying that the February's Minsk peace agreements between Kiev and Donbas independence supporters were finally taking hold.

Almost 8,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine since the start of the military conflict in April 2014, according to the last UN report.