At a time when the Ukrainian president called for a ceasefire between the Russian and Ukrainian sides, Ukrainian media broadcast footage of the moment when Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi and a team of 25 foreign journalists were subjected to artillery shelling during a tour near the Donetsk region, which declared its separation from Kyiv.

The footage shows the delegation fleeing while touring the area, and their repeated attempts to take cover from the shells that were falling heavily on the area, with their sound audible in the video.

The minister was immediately moved by his security to another location, while the journalists entered a shelter of the Ukrainian army in the area to take cover from the shells that continued to fall, until they were able to withdraw from the place safely.

For its part, the Ukrainian army said in a statement that shelling in the early hours of Saturday morning led to the death of a soldier in the government-controlled part of the Donetsk region.

The statement confirmed that the separatist forces were placing artillery shells in residential areas in an attempt to provoke a response from the Ukrainian army.

Earlier on Saturday, the pro-Russian separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk declared a general mobilization amid military tension in the Donbas area in the east of the country.

The general mobilization came amid a mass evacuation of women, children, and the elderly from the territories controlled by the separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to neighboring Russia.