Kremlin plans 2nd aid convoy as clashes rage
Kyiv on Monday said its forces were clashing with an armoured column that crossed the border from Russia as Moscow ramped up tensions ahead of crunch talks by pledging to send in a new aid convoy. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are under pressure to defuse the crisis when they meet for the first time in months alongside top EU officials in Minsk Tuesday.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said that border guards were battling “several dozen” armoured vehicles that smashed through the border in the south and headed in the direction of the government-held city of Mariupol. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov dismissed the report as Ukrainian and Western media disinformation, telling a Moscow news conference:
“I haven’t heard about it, but there has been more than enough disinformation about our invasion. No doubt some foreign newspaper will print that ‘news’ tomorrow.” If confirmed, the incursion could represent a dangerous push into territory in the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control after a brutal offensive by Kyiv had seen government forces pin back struggling insurgent fighters. A top rebel chief on Sunday announced a counter offensive to the south of the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk and claimed to have deployed fresh tanks and artillery.
Journalists witnessed heavy fighting raging to the south of the city with the sound of explosions ringing out and smoke rising from towns to the south.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that parading Ukrainian prisoners of war through a baying crowd in a rebel-held city was not demeaning. “I saw images of that parade and I didn’t see anything close to what could be considered as humiliating,” Mr Lavrov said at a news conference. “Concerning the degrading treatment of war prisoners, let the lawyers handle it,” he added. He was referring to a parade in Ukraine’s rebel stronghold of Donetsk on Sunday in which 40 or 50 Ukrainian soldiers were made to walk through a jeering crowd in the main square. Furious onlookers shouted “Fascists! Fascists!” and threw empty bottles and rotten food at the captured troops, who walked with heads bowed and hands behind their backs. The move was seen as a riposte to Independence Day celebrations and a military parade in Kyiv on Sunday, and appeared to recall the infamous World War II event in 1944 when Soviet soldiers marched thousands of defeated German troops through Moscow. As in 1944, cleaning trucks followed the captives in Donetsk, spraying water to “cleanse” the streets after they had passed. After four months of fighting in eastern Ukraine, many in region said the treatment of the captives as justified.