Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone (Ukrainian: Зона проведення антитерористичної операції, romanized: Zona provedennya antyterorystychnoyi operatsiyi), or ATO zone (Ukrainian: Зона АТО, romanized: Zona ATO), was a term used by the media, public, the government of Ukraine, and the OSCE and other foreign institutions to identify Ukrainian territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (oblasts) under the control of Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists. A significant part of ATO (JFO, starting 2018) zone was considered temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. In Minsk II protocols of 2015 it was referred to as 'certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions'.
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👉 ATO zone in the context of Siege of Sloviansk
The siege of Sloviansk was conducted by Ukraine between 12 April 2014 and 5 July 2014. It began when Sloviansk was seized by the fifty-strong unit of heavily armed Russian militants lead by Russian citizen Igor Girkin. Following three months of heavy fighting between the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the separatist and Russian forces, the Ukrainian government retook the city as the pro-Russia rebels retreated to Donetsk. The engagement in Sloviansk marked the first military engagement of the War in Donbas.
On 12 April 2014, as unrest grew in eastern Ukraine following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, masked men in fatigues, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, took over the town and began to fortify it. They claimed to be local fighters of the Donetsk People's Republic, but were actually Russian Armed Forces 'volunteers' under the command of Russian GRU colonel Igor Girkin ('Strelkov'). In response, the Ukrainian Yatsenyuk Government created the first Anti-Terrorist Operations zone (ATO) and launched a series of counter-offensives against the insurgents, resulting in a standoff and violent skirmishes. Girkin later acknowledged that his men's seizure of Sloviansk sparked what would become the Donbas War.