Ukraine says rebels get reinforcements


Kyiv accused separatists of preparing for renewed conflict in
east Ukraine on Tuesday by bringing in “Russian mercenaries”
and rearming as heavy shelling increased strains on a
crumbling ceasefire.

In Berlin, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief said
the bloc’s foreign ministers would discuss new punitive
measures against Russia next week, but German Chancellor
Angela Merkel ruled out further economic sanctions for now.

Shelling around Donetsk, the main rebel stronghold, and
artillery exchanges elsewhere punctured a truce that has been
violated by what Kyiv says are armed Russian incursions, and
what the rebels call a new offensive by government forces.

“Russian mercenaries are strengthening and reinforcing
(rebel) forces near the front line,” Ukrainian military
spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a news briefing in Kyiv.

He said the rebels had beefed up positions around the port
city of Mariupol in the southeast, control of which would
open up roads to territory in southern Ukraine that some
Western leaders say Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to
claim.

NATO CONCERN

The ceasefire agreed on Sept. 5 was intended to end a
conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people since the
separatists rose up in the mainly Russian-speaking east
against the Western-looking government in Kyiv.

It has been unravelling quickly since separatist leaders were
chosen in an election on Nov. 2 which the West said was
illegitimate because it violated the terms of the truce.

In what has become the worst standoff between Moscow and the
West since the Cold War, Lysenko said the rebels had received
new ammunition, equipment and personnel in the past few days.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier warned in
Berlin against “a return to a situation of two or three
months ago with violent clashes and daily killings”.

NATO’s supreme allied commander, U.S. Air Force General
Philip Breedlove, also expressed concern about the rebel
build-up and criticised several close air, land and sea
encounters between Russian and NATO forces in the last few
weeks.

“In the air those interactions have multiplied, by some
accounts, as many as three times … We now see larger
(Russian) forces participating, as opposed to one or two
bombers in the past,” he said at a NATO base near Naples.

TROOP AND TANKS MOVEMENTS

Russia has denied providing the rebels with military support
in a conflict it says was instigated by the West to keep
Russia in check on the world stage, but NATO says there is
overwhelming evidence it has sent in troops and weapons.

Kyiv says a column of tanks and truckloads of troops crossed
into east Ukraine from Russia last Thursday and officials
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation, a body
that includes Russia, Ukraine, the United States and Western
European countries, have spotted armoured columns moving in
the past few days.

A Reuters correspondent saw a convoy of about 50 military
trucks without insignia on Tuesday carrying equipment such as
artillery guns and missile-launchers near Makiivka, on the
eastern outskirts of Donetsk. The OCSE also reported a
sighting of what appeared to be the same convoy.

The United States and EU started imposing economic sanctions
on Moscow in response to Russia’s seizure of the Crimean
peninsula from Ukraine in March, a month after the overthrow
of a Moscow-backed president in Kyiv following street
protests.

The sanctions have deepened an economic slowdown in Russia,
and the rouble has lost nearly 30 percent of its value
against the dollar this year, but support for Putin is high
in Russia and he has not softened his policy on Ukraine.

Alarm is growing in the West at what is increasingly seen as
attempts by Putin to keep eastern Ukraine in Moscow’s sphere
of influence and bloc Kyiv’s campaign to join Europe’s
mainstream.

But Merkel, who leads the EU’s most powerful nation, said she
opposed anything stronger than an extension to EU travel bans
on newly-elected separatist officials when the bloc’s foreign
ministers meet in Brussels next week.

“Beyond that, further economic sanctions are not planned at
the moment, we are focusing on the winter and the
humanitarian situation there and how to get a real
ceasefire,” she said.

EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini said the
ministers would also discuss increased support for Ukraine,
which is near bankruptcy, dependent on international loans
and deeply in debt to Russia for natural gas.