Ukraine claims key gains over pro-Russia rebels
Slavyansk Kyiv claimed it inflicted stinging defeats on pro-Kremlin rebels in east Ukraine on Thursday.
Shooting was heard in the rebel-held flashpoint town of Slavyansk, where a roadblock manned by insurgents was in flames, according to a journalist. Seven army armoured vehicles were approaching the town, one militant said.
Ukrainian special forces retook control of the town hall in the southeastern port city of Mariupol and an army base in the eastern town of Artemivsk repelled an attack by heavily armed rebels, Kyiv’s interior and defence ministries said.
They were the first military successes announced by Ukraine’s western-backed government since pro-Russian militants seized control of a string of towns in the country’s southeast over the past several weeks.
Separatist sources in the east confirmed they had lost the town hall in Mariupol, a port city on the Black Sea with a population of nearly 500,000. The city was the scene of a rebel attack on troops last week that left three militants dead. The separatists had held the town hall since April 13.
According to Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, “the town hall is liberated and can function normally”.
Dozens of pro-Moscow demonstrators were surrounding it later in the day and controlling access to the building, which was still flying the separatist flag. Tyres and barbed-wire barricades remained in place
Police were working inside the five-storey city hall, which appeared to be otherwise empty.
Mariupol, an industrial port city of nearly half a million people, is one of a series of flashpoints across eastern Ukraine where Russian-speaking militants have occupied public buildings to press their demands for annexation by Russia.
In Artemivsk, just north of the rebel-held hub of Donetsk, Ukraine’s defence ministry said in a statement that nearly 100 separatists “opened fire with automatic weapons, machine guns and used grenades” in the overnight attack on the military base.
It said a soldier was wounded, but not critically.
“The attackers were repelled and suffered significant losses,” acting president Oleksandr Turchynov said in his own statement.
Turchynov vowed to push on with the offensive to put down the rebellion in the east.
“We will not back down from the terrorist threat,” Turchynov said in a televised address.
“We demand Russia stop interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine … and withdraw its troops from the eastern border of Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian government announced an offensive against the rebels following the discovery in a river near Slavyansk of a weighted down body of an abducted local politician who belonged to Turchynov’s party.
On Thursday, a funeral was held for the dead man, Volodymyr Rybak, in his home town of Horlivka. His wife and friends wept before his body, which was covered in flowers, before prayers were said and it was taken for burial. Turchynov had said he had been “brutally tortured” and blamed the rebels, while his wife said he had been stabbed multiple times.
The European Union’s top foreign policy official, Catherine Ashton, expressed “grave concern” at the murder of Rybak and other violence.