RPT-Ukraine’s Mariupol holds its breath for next rebel move
(Repeats story first filed on Sunday)
By Alessandra Prentice
MARIUPOL, Ukraine March 1 (Reuters) – Scanning the sky for
incoming artillery fire has become a force of habit for
Ukrainian beetroot-seller Svetlana Kumurzhi, who dived under her
wooden stall in government-held Mariupol when shells rained down
a month ago.
While a fragile two-week-old ceasefire shows signs of
holding, Kyiv says pro-Russian separatists are using the truce
to regroup their forces, especially around Mariupol, a
strategically important port city in Ukraine’s southeast.
Control of the industrial hub would help the rebels form a
corridor to the Crimea peninsula which Russia annexed from
Ukraine last year.
Since the truce, they have said they aim to win the city
through negotiation, not force of arms. Aware there is no
provision for that in the latest internationally brokered peace
accords, Mariupol’s residents are holding their breath.
“We’re all afraid the fighting will come here again, we
can’t leave because there’s nowhere to go. Look, nobody has
money here,” Kumurzhi said, gesturing at the crumbling Soviet
apartment blocks around her.
The shelling on Jan. 24 killed thirty people in the district
of Vostochnaya where she runs her stall. Plastic sheeting has
been taped over many of the windows, blown out by the blasts
around the marketplace and a nearby carpark is filled with the
burnt out shells of cars. Shrapnel marks scar the roads.
Government troops and rebels have been vying for control of
the nearby village of Shyrokyne, each accusing the other of
provoking the other side to attack.
The guns have fallen silent in recent days, but on Friday
Ukraine’s military said it had tracked a convoy of GRAD missile
systems and other military equipment leaving the separatist
stronghold of Donetsk in the direction of Mariupol.
Kyiv also says military equipment from Russia has been
spotted crossing the border by Novoazovsk, east of Mariupol,
since the start of the ceasefire, aimed at ending a conflict in
which over 5,600 have been killed.
The separatists, who seized Mariupol briefly as they swept
through eastern Ukraine last year, say it should be theirs.
“If Putin decides he wants Mariupol then they will take it,
they’re better armed than us,” said national guard soldier
Vitaly Mashtabei, stationed near Vostochnaya.
“When we capture fighters from the other side, they have
top-of-the-range modern guns and most of our guys only have the
old Soviet stuff,” he said.
Kyiv and its Western allies say the rebels are funded and
armed by Moscow, and backed by Russian military units. Moscow
denies aiding sympathisers in Ukraine.
NOTHING WILL BE LEFT
In the centre of Mariupol, only spray-painted signs to the
nearest underground bomb-shelters suggest residents are living
under the threat of attack.
“We’ve heard no shelling for a few days, so that’s some
positive news at least,” said Yuriy Zinchenko the general
director of the sprawling Metinvest Ilyich steel works, which
together with its sister factory, Azov Steel, employs nearly 10
percent of Mariupol’s population.
“If fighting breaks out in the city then nothing will be
left of it,” he said, his hands clasped in front of him.
The plant is producing half as much steel as before the
conflict, but has kept working despite rebel artillery strikes
on the bridge connecting it to the port in December and severe
supply disruptions, he said.
Rebels initially disavowed the ceasefire deal to seize the
transport hub of Debaltseve, which it had also claimed as its
own, in a humiliating defeat for government troops that
destroyed most of the town’s strategic infrastructure.
The example of Debaltseve was “terrifying,” Zinchenko said.
“But we’re not going anywhere, we’re planning to stay here and
flourish.”
Asked about a possible offensive on Mariupol, Denis
Pushilin, who represented the rebels at the talks which brokered
the peace deal, said last week they would choose negotiation.
“We’ll do everything possible to make it happen through
political means,” Russian media quoted Pushilin as saying.
Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk accused separatists of
trying to destabilise Mariupol, where Russian and Ukrainian
sympathisers live side by side, by disrupting supplies to its
steel plants from the Avdiivka coke plant, around 100 km (70
miles) to the north.
“They are intentionally bombing Avdiivka to destroy the coke
plant, so that Mariupol’s factories close, so there’s a social
revolt in Mariupol,” he said in a televised interview on Friday.
The Ukrainian military reported a significant decrease in
rebel attacks over the weekend, but said GRAD rockets had been
fired at Avdiivka and tanks had fired at government troops
stationed there.
In a dilapidated boarding house in Mariupol, refugees from
across the conflict zone waited wearily to see if they would be
forced to flee once again.
Small boys played tag in the corridors as women lugged
buckets of water up to the rooms, which have up to three
families crammed in at a time. A child’s drawing was taped to
each door. Some depicted Ukrainian flags or doves, others showed
tanks and smiling soldiers firing guns.
The most recent influx of people came from nearby Shyrokyne.
They had been living in bomb shelters for three weeks until
escaping a week ago.
Retired fish factory worker Vera Logozinskaya waved her
walking stick in the air as she described the fierce battle for
her village.
“There were tanks here and tanks there, everyone shooting at
each other. And we were just sitting there, shaking underground.
It was pure animal fear. God forbid the same thing happens
here,” she said.
(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk; editing by Philippa
Fletcher)