Ukraine wages deadly assault on rebels
Slavyansk [AFP]
Ukraine’s military has suffered heavy casualties in a stepped-up offensive on pro-Russian rebels, as Europe and the head of the UN made a last-ditch diplomatic effort to reel the country back from the brink of civil war.
At least four Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 30 wounded battling heavily armed insurgents around the flashpoint eastern town of Slavyansk on Monday as Russia warned the violence was threatening peace in Europe.
The interior ministry in Kyiv said the pro-Russian gunmen controlling the town were using civilians as human shields and shooting from houses, some of which were ablaze.
‘They are waging a war on us, on our own territory … my mission is to eliminate the terrorists’, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov told reporters near Slavyansk, from where he was overseeing the assault.
The head of Ukraine’s national guard, Stepan Poltorak, said: ‘We have bottled them (the rebels) up in the centre of Slavyansk, but added that our adversaries are well-trained and well-equipped’.
Authorities in the regional capital Donetsk said one civilian in Slavyansk was killed and some 15 wounded in the fighting.
The advance on Slavyansk was part of a wider military operation in the east to root out the separatist insurgents, who are holding more than a dozen towns.
The authorities retook control of the TV tower near Slavyansk but lost a helicopter, cut down by machine gun fire. The pilots survived.
Russia, which denies any hand in the violence, warned in a foreign ministry report that the unrest in Ukraine was now fraught with such destructive consequences for Europe’s peace, stability and democratic development that it is absolutely necessary to prevent it.
The report accused Ukrainian ultra-nationalists – who Moscow claims control Kyiv’s government – of rights violations on a mass scale.
Moscow later warned of an evolving humanitarian disaster in eastern Ukraine where it said Kyiv was carrying out terror against its own people.
But Ukraine’s interim president declared it was Russian meddling that had brought war to his country. He warned pro-Russian provocateurs might stage violence in Kyiv during celebrations on Friday marking the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
‘War is in effect being waged against us, and we must be ready to repel this aggression’, said Oleksandr Turchynov, who has placed Ukraine’s armed forces on combat alert and reintroduced conscription amid fears of a Russian invasion.
There were concerns also for the south of Ukraine, in the port city of Odessa, which was seething after a deadly clashes and a fire on Friday that killed 42 people.
After an angry pro-Russian crowd on Sunday stormed Odessa’s police headquarters and forced officers inside to free 67 of their arrested fellow activists, authorities moved the 42 remaining inmates to other parts of Ukraine.
European leaders, fearing all-out civil war on their eastern flank, launched a desperate new peace bid, urging Ukraine and Russia to find a negotiated solution.
The chairman of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Didier Burkhalter, was due in Moscow on Wednesday amid calls for his group to mediate between Kyiv and eastern separatists.