Ukraine troops regain control of parts of east
KYIV Ukraine claimed it had regained control of swathes of the separatist east on Friday and the government vowed to press ahead with a military offensive against separatists, despite a deadly attack on an army helicopter, amid increasing reports that fighters from Russia have been involved in rebellions in the east.
The rebels for their part dismissed speculation of a rift in their ranks after a dozen local militants were evicted from their seat of power in Donetsk by a military brigade comprised largely of Chechens and other Russians from the volatile North Caucasus.
Both Kyiv and its western allies have long accused the Kremlin of choreographing a seven-week insurgency that has shaken Ukraine’s foundations.
But the recent appearance among the separatists of trained gunmen from Chechnya – has fuelled fears of the conflict being transformed into a proxy war involving elements from other unstable regions of the former Soviet Union.
President-elect Petro Poroshenko swore to punish those responsible for the shooting down of the helicopter near Slaviansk, which killed 14 servicemen including a general.
Acting Defence Minister Mykhilo Koval, repeating charges that Russia was carrying out “special operations” in the east of Ukraine, said on Friday that Ukrainian forces would continue with military operations in border areas “until these regions begin to live normally, until there is peace”.
“Our armed forces have completed their assigned missions and completely cleared the southern and western parts of the Donetsk region and the northern part of the Lugansk region from the separatists,” Koval said.
Pro-Russian militants seized about a dozen towns and cities in the two eastern industrial regions in response to the popular ouster in Kyiv of a Kremlin-backed president.
Rebels in control of the Lugansk and Donetsk government buildings have declared independence and are seeking a merger with Russia similar to that accomplished by Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula of Crimea following its seizure by pro-Kremlin troops in March.
Ukraine’s acting defence chief said his soldiers intended to push ahead with their so-called “anti-terrorist operation” despite demands by Moscow for all military activities to come to an immediate halt.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a telephone call with US Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday, urged Washington to pressure Ukraine’s government to stop its military operation in eastern Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“Lavrov urged the United States to encourage the authorities in Kyiv to…immediately cease military operations and begin direct negotiations with (representatives of) the southeastern regions,” the ministry said.
Russia also accused Kyiv’s armed forces of breaching international law protecting civilians in wartime by killing and wounding peaceful citizens as it fights pro-Russian insurgents.
The Investigative Committee, the Russian equivalent of the FBI, said in a statement that Ukraine’s armed forces as well as its National Guard and the Right Sector ultra-nationalist group caused civilian deaths “in breach of the Geneva Convention of 1949 on protecting the civilian population in time of war.”
Elsewhere in Ukraine’s troubled eastern regions, a separatist group detained a second four-person team of monitors of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Vienna-based organization said.
Reports by Ukrainian border authorities appear to show increasing evidence of direct involvement by fighters from Russia in the rebellion.
Ukraine’s authorities say Russian border guards are doing nothing to stop fighters crossing the long land border from Russia, along with truck loads of ammunition and weapons.
In the latest such report, Ukrainian border guards said they had seized a cache of weapons including guns, machine-guns, grenade-launchers, sniper rifles and 84 boxes of live ammunition in two cars they stopped as they crossed from Russia.
A total of 13 people were detained, the border guard service said.
An official of the Ukrainian border guard service said on Friday that bodies of slain Russian nationals were being allowed to return to Russia for humanitarian reasons.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov says weapons that could only have been brought in from Russia were found at the scene of Donetsk airport after it was cleared of rebels.