Ukraine blocks attack by pro-Russian rebels at major airport
Ukraine fended off an attack by pro-Russian rebels at a major airport Saturday as Moscow sent another convoy of aid into the country, underscoring the fragility of the cease-fire between the two countries.
Ukrainian military leaders repelled separatists at Donetsk airport as another round of fighting erupted in the eastern part of the country Saturday, about a week after the cease-fire agreement was reached.
A volley of rockets struck residential buildings near the airport but no casualties were reported, according to a statement posted on the City Council website.
Heightening tensions further was Moscow’s decision to send a second convoy of trucks into Ukraine without its consent.
The fighting prompted Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to assert Saturday that, despite a truce, his country remains locked in a conflict prodded by its powerful neighbor.
“This government is the wartime government. And let me put it bluntly — we are still in the state of war and the key aggressor is the Russian Federation,” Yatsenyuk said in a speech at a conference of Ukrainian and European officials in Yalta.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country annexed most of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March, has consistently denied that Russian troops have entered eastern Ukraine. But he defends the Russian-speaking minority’s right to defend themselves.
Meanwhile, a convoy of about 200 trucks, which Russian news outlets said were filled with almost 2,000 tons of humanitarian aid, rolled across the Russian border and into Ukraine.
The first trucks delivered shipments of cereals, sugar, medicines and warm clothes, among other items, to the eastern Ukrainian city of Lugansk, according to a report by the Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.
Five-liter containers with drinking water “brought special joy to residents who had been left without water for more than a month,” ITAR-TASS reported.
In August, Ukrainian officials called the first convoy of humanitarian aid from Russia an invasion of the country, and loudly protested any attempts by Russia to unilaterally bring in the aid. Eventually, Russia allowed its trucks to cross into rebel-held territory without the oversight of the International Red Cross, contrary to an agreement signed between Ukraine and Russia.
Ukrainian officials’ silence on the second convoy shows how dramatically the mood has shifted in the Kyiv government, where President Petro Poroshenko has been at pains to prove that a cease-fire deal, riddled by violations since it was imposed last week, has yielded improvements on the ground in east Ukraine.
But in his speech Saturday, Yatsenyuk said important government-proposed reforms to benefit the entire country have been stymied by the ongoing conflict.
“If we stop the war, if we contain Russia — we will get the chance to attract international investors, because it is not an easy job to attract an international investor when you have in your country already Russian tanks and Russian artillery,” he said.