UPDATE 1-Ukraine forces shell rebels near key port hours before possible …
MARIUPOL, Ukraine, Sept 5 (Reuters) – Ukrainian forces
pounded pro-Russian rebels to the east of the port of Mariupol
on Friday, hours before envoys from Ukraine and Russia were
expected to announce a ceasefire as the starting point for a
wider peace plan.
Ukraine says its forces are trying to repel a big offensive
by the rebels to take Mariupol, a port city of around 500,000 on
the Sea of Azov crucial for its steel exports. It stands about
halfway between Russia and the Russian-annexed Crimea region.
“Our artillery has come and is being deployed against the
(pro-Russian) rebels,” the mayor of Mariupol, Yuri Khotlubey,
told Ukraine’s 112 TV channel.
As he spoke, Reuters witnesses in Mariupol heard artillery
shelling a few kilometres (miles) to the east of the centre.
A commander of a Ukrainian volunteer militia based in
Mariupol told Reuters by telephone that his battalion had been
under sustained rebel fire all night into Friday.
“We are still keeping the rebels at bay. They are
confronting us with tanks and artillery,” he said.
Pro-Russian separatists told the Interfax news agency that
about 50 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in
fighting near Mariupol on Thursday and three had been taken
captive. The report could not be independently confirmed.
Mariupol became a major focus of concern for Ukraine after
the rebels broke away from their main strongholds further north
in late August – backed, Kyiv says, by Russian regular forces –
and took the nearby coastal town of Novoazovsk.
Representatives from Ukraine, the pro-Russian rebel
leadership, Russia and Europe’s OSCE security watchdog are
expected to meet in the Belarussian capital Minsk later on
Friday to agree a ceasefire to pave the way for implementation
of a “stage-by-stage peace plan” for his country.
However, few in eastern Ukraine, wearied by nearly six
months of conflict, have much hope that a ceasefire can hold.
“I would not be a decent human being if I say I am not for
the ceasefire, but all these bandits and mercenaries and
(Russian) invaders must be kicked out of Ukraine never to
return,” said Anatoly, a pensioner in his 70s, in Mariupol.
A Ukrainian soldier who gave his name as Mykola said
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko – who was attending the
second day of a NATO summit in Wales on Friday – would “betray
the country” if he backed a peace plan at this time.
“If he goes for a peace plan, then all these dead and
wounded and exiled and all the homes burned and jobs lost and
money lost, it was all for nothing,” he said.
“We must defeat them and then talk peace.”
(Writing by Gareth Jones, editing by Elizabeth Piper)