Pro-Russian rebels to withdraw guns, tanks from Ukraine front line
By Michel Moutot and Tanya Willmer
Pro-Russian rebels say they are withdrawing guns and tanks from the front line in eastern Ukraine under a peace plan forged with Kyiv that aims to end five months of conflict.
AFP correspondents saw tanks moving back from an area east of the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk, although fighting was reported around the city’s airport.
“We have withdrawn artillery but only in those areas where the Ukrainian regular units have done the same,” said the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, on Tuesday (local time).
“Where Ukraine hasn’t withdrawn artillery, we haven’t done so,” he told the Interfax news agency.
Ukraine had said on Monday (local time) it was starting a pullback under the terms of the deal signed in Minsk on Saturday that calls for both sides to withdraw from the front line and establish a 30km-wide demilitarised zone.
Across the flashpoint industrial regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, the level of violence appears to have subsided after five months of warfare that has killed about 3000 people and sent East-West tensions soaring.
However, AFP journalists said the airport in Donetsk, a key battleground in the conflict, was hit by heavy artillery on Tuesday morning, sending flames and large clouds of black smoke shooting into the sky.
Donetsk city hall said a civilian was killed overnight, bringing to 40 the number of Ukrainian troops and civilians killed since an initial September 5 truce that was also signed in the Belarussian capital.
“Not everything’s clear with the ceasefire,” Zakharchenko said. “Firing from the Ukrainian side is still going on as before. I would call this a slow-moving military operation.”
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko agreed to the peace plan after several rounds of talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who is blamed by Kyiv and the West for fomenting the rebellion by sending in elite troops and heavy weapons.
The war “cannot be won by military means alone”, Poroshenko said on Sunday, while warning Ukraine would defend itself with renewed vigour should the truce collapse.
Kyiv signed up to the deal after the rebels – apparently with Russian backing – swept across the southeast of Ukraine, delivering a series of battlefield defeats to government.
Ukrainian MPs this month offered the rebels temporary self-rule but the Minsk deal puts on the back burner all issues concerning claims by the separatist regions for full independence.
Poroshenko said the “special status” law was the only way out of a conflict that has threatened Ukraine’s very survival in the face of what Kyiv views as Russia’s expansionist threat after its annexation of Crimea in March.
NATO says Russia still has troops in Ukraine, although Moscow denies ever sending forces across the border.
The self-rule law has been pilloried both by nationalist politicians who accuse Poroshenko of conceding defeat to the Kremlin, and by the rebels who feel they are no longer bound to Kyiv.
AFP