ANOTHER Ukrainian anti-fascist commander was assassinated yesterday morning — the second in a week — when a shoulder-launched rocket hit his office.

Mikhail Tolstykh, better known under his nom de guerre Givi, died in the attack in Donetsk city, capital of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Peoples’ Republic (DPR).

“Mikhail Tolstykh, a hero of the People’s Republic of Donetsk, the commander of Somali battalion, was killed today at 6.12am as a result of a terrorist attack,” the Donetsk News Agency quoted from a statement from the DPR’s military command.

“His assassination comes as a continuation of the terrorist war that the Kiev junta launched against the Donbass.”

The Somali battalion fought in some of the fiercest battles, including the siege of Donetsk airport, after taking up arms against the far-right regime that took power in the 2014 Maidan Square coup.

Mr Tolstykh was accused of mistreating prisoners of war and sanctioned by the EU.

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Mr Tolstykh’s death as an attempt to “destabilise the situation” in the Donbass. More than 30 people have died since last week’s breakdown in the ceasefire. Those included Donbass militia, Kiev regime troops and civilians as the Ukrainian army bombarded Donetsk city with heavy artillery and rockets.

On Saturday militia commander Oleg Anashchenko was killed along with one other person when an explosion destroyed his car in the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic, to the north-east of the DPR. The Lugansk Information Centre blamed Ukraine’s special services for the blast.

Killings of high-profile commanders in Ukraine’s Donbass began in May 2015 with the bombing of the charismatic Alexei Mozgovoi.

In October Arsen Pavlov, known as “Motorola,” was killed when his flat was bombed — which the DPR also blamed on Kiev agents.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry has condemned a stunt by a Ukrainian MP, who defaced a part of the Berlin Wall relocated in the grounds of Germany’s Kiev embassy.

Oleksiy Honcharenko, a member of President Petro Poroshenko’s bloc, sprayed red paint on a fragment of the wall yesterday after German ambassador Ernst Reichel suggested local elections could be held in the Donbass despite Kiev’s intent to “raise Ukrainian flags at each city council” and the alleged presence of Russian troops.

Local elections and an amnesty for Donbass militia are the two key conditions of the Minsk peace accords that Kiev has failed to implement.

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