News.Kyiv.Me.

By Gabriela Baczynska

DONETSK, Ukraine, Oct 6 (Reuters) – While fighting in much
of eastern Ukraine has been calmed by a month-old truce, it
rages unabated at the airport near Donetsk, turning a shiny
symbol of the country’s Western integration into a shattered
mirror of its future prospects.

The new terminal European soccer fans used in 2012 to reach
some of the matches hosted by Ukraine is now a pitted hulk, a
strategic target for the pro-Western Kyiv government and the
rebels pulling the ex-Soviet republic back into Moscow’s orbit.

The airport sits some 10 km (six miles) from the city
centre. For the Ukrainian military, which wrested it from the
rebels in fierce fighting in late May, it is their closest
position to Donetsk, an industrial hub and separatist stronghold
where the rebels declared a “people’s republic” in April.

The separatists fear Kyiv troops may use the compound as a
way into Donetsk. “The airport is practically inside the city
limits,” Eduard Basulin, a deputy defence minister in the
“Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR), told Reuters.

“Our main goal is to push back the line from which they can
shell us as far as possible so that they cannot fire at the city
any more. They are very close,” Basulin said, his camouflage
uniform decorated with a little silver-coloured lapel pin
depicting Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

The opposite kind of geopolitical symbolism was on display
when Ukraine co-hosted the 2012 European soccer championship
with European Union member Poland, another former communist
country which is now a member of NATO.

But two years later, it was precisely Kyiv’s Western
aspirations that led to Moscow seizing Crimea in March and
backing separatist claims in east Ukraine where turmoil erupted
in April.

More than 3,500 people have since been killed, and the
disintegration of the airport’s terminal and control tower from
heavy shelling is a striking symbol of the crumbling of the
country and its prospects for closer ties with Western Europe.

HEAVY WEAPONS

Pro-Russian separatists now control large parts of the
Donetsk region and that of Luhansk, a city in eastern Ukraine
near the border with Russia where another sseparatist “people’s
republic” was declared.

The front line has moved little since the ceasefire early in
September, although the rebels have gained a little more
territory in Ukraine’s southeastern corner and have their sights
firmly set on the airport in Donetsk.

Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow national flag is still tucked atop
the airport’s control tower where most windows are smashed, and
military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the runway was in working
order. The rebels say the tarmac is badly damaged and cannot
receive heavy transports.

“The flight runway at Donetsk airport is in satisfactory
condition and can receive heavy planes which can deliver weapons
and heavy military equipment,” Lysenko said on Monday, after
rebels claimed most of the airport was under their control.

Ukrainian troops hold the building of the airport’s old,
smaller terminal whose solid basements offer enough shelter to
sustain heavy shelling. A military compound sitting right next
to the airport is also in Ukraine’s hands.

There is daily skirmishing and regular outbursts of heavy
fighting around the airport area and the military says its
positions have come under attack from rebels in towns towards
the Russian border such as Debaltseve and Schastye that lie
north-east of Donetsk.

On Monday afternoon, what looked like return fire from the
military reached a residential area near the airport from which
the rebels had fired on Ukrainian positions for a few days. The
body of a local resident, wrapped in a carpet, lay on the ground
nearby.

NO “MATTER OF HOURS”

The recapture in May of the airport, named after
Donetsk-born composer Sergei Prokofiev and modernised with a
glass and concrete terminal for the soccer tournament, marked an
early triumph for President Petro Poroshenko.

The day after he was elected to replace a pro-Russian
president ousted by protests in February, Ukraine launched air
strikes and a paratroop assault to retake the airport from
rebels who had blocked it. A city morgue was filled with bodies
of rebel gunmen after the battle.

Poroshenko at that time rejected any talks with “terrorists”
and said a robust military campaign should be able to put down
the revolt in “a matter of hours”.

But neither side has so far managed to get full control of
the site and, more than four months later and despite the
ceasefire which has led to a fall-off in fighting in many places
in east Ukraine, Donetsk airport has seen little, if no,
respite.

Ukraine and the separatists both say they are respecting the
ceasefire agreement and only replying to fire to protect
themselves if attacked.

Both accuse the other of using multiple rocket launchers,
heavy artillery and tanks in and around the airport perimeter,
where hundreds of rival fighters have been killed.

Basulin said fewer than 200 separatists had been killed in
the airport fighting, including more than 50 in late May on the
first day of heavy clashes.

The bodies of some of them were taken to Russia for burial,
fuelling accusations by the government in Kyiv and its Western
backers that Moscow is fanning the separatist unrest in the east
by arming the rebels and reinforcing them with Russian troops.

Moscow says Kyiv has been mistreating the region’s
Russian-speaking population but denies direct involvement in a
conflict that shows few signs of nearing a resolution.

With the rebels in Donetsk attacking the airport from the
edge of the city, including from residential blocks and
free-standing homes hit in the crossfire, many – but not all –
residents left long ago.

(Additional reporting by Pavel Polityuk in Kyiv,; editing by
Richard Balmforth and Philippa Fletcher)

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