Ukraine to swell military response – Tribune
DONETSK, Ukraine — The Ukrainian government vowed to push ahead Wednesday with military operations against pro-Russia separatists in the embattled east of the country after a big show of strength routing rebels from this city’s international airport.
Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president-elect, said the “anti-terrorist operationâ€� against the rebels, whom he has likened to Somali pirates, “has finally really begun.â€� In an interview with Germany’s Bild newspaper, Poroshenko, 48, said he was in close contact with the Ukrainian interim government in Kyiv.
Ukraine’s military on Tuesday used Soviet-era fighter jets and attack helicopters to pound rebels and retake Donetsk’s Sergei Prokofiev International Airport. The rebels, who said they suffered a heavy loss of life in the two-day operation, had seized the airport, the nation’s second-largest, in this eastern city on Monday, a day after Ukraine’s presidential and mayoral elections.
Exchanges of machine-gun fire and explosions continued near the airport Wednesday.
Poroshenko, one of Ukraine’s richest tycoons, convincingly won the May 25 presidential election in the first round. He said after his victory that he wants to pursue talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, although he accused Russia of instigating the violence in the east.
“Russia’s goal was, and is, to keep Ukraine so unstable that we accept everything that the Russians want,â€� Poroshenko said in the interview. “I have no doubt that Putin could, with his direct influence, end the fighting.â€�
Poroshenko said he intended to call on the United States for military supplies and training. He spoke Tuesday to President Obama and was scheduled to meet with him in Europe next week.
In eastern Ukraine, Donetsk Mayor Aleksandr Lukyanchenko said on his website that the city, capital of a region declared a sovereign republic by separatists after a chaotic referendum on self-rule, was “relatively calm� Wednesday morning.
But in the town of Marinka, about 20 miles west of Donetsk, 11 monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were detained by an unidentified armed group for about seven hours Wednesday after being stopped at a roadblock, OSCE spokesman Michael Bociurkiw said.
He said the monitors, including one American, were released Wednesday evening under unclear circumstances and were escorted back to Donetsk. They had been on their way to another part of the country for security reasons, Bociurkiw said.
Four other OSCE monitors are still missing after disappearing near Donetsk on Monday night. The OSCE lost contact with the four — from Estonia, Denmark, Switzerland and Turkey — when they were stopped at a separatist checkpoint, Bociurkiw said.
Denis Pushilin, a leader of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic,â€� addressed a rally of a few hundred people in Donetsk’s Lenin Square on Wednesday, issuing a call to the region’s miners to join the separatist fight.
He told the rally that he would not give up, that this was their home. As he spoke, surrounded by bodyguards and wearing a bulletproof vest under his blue suit, a Ukrainian military jet roared in the distance above the city’s airport, which remained closed Wednesday.
Pushilin said the rebels would continue to defy Ukrainian ultimatums to lay down their arms. He also said more volunteers — “our brothers� — were coming from friendly regions and states to Donetsk as reinforcements.
“We are not going to leave, and we are not going to surrender. This is our land and our home. We will protect our land and our home,� Pushilin said. “We are getting stronger and stronger.�