WRAPUP 2-Ukraine defiant on national day, rebels parade captives
* Ukraine celebrates independence from Soviet rule
* Military parade in Kyiv a show of defiance to Moscow
* Eastern rebels counter with parade of prisoners of war
* Russian, Ukrainian leaders to meet for talks next week
(Updates with Merkel, EU comments)
By Richard Balmforth and Thomas Grove
KYIV/DONETSK, Ukraine, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine marked its
independence day on Sunday with a military march-past in Kyiv
intended to send a message of defiance to Russia, but pro-Moscow
rebels countered by parading captured Ukrainian troops through
the streets of their main stronghold.
The rival events highlighted the divide that will have to be
bridged if a compromise on Ukraine is to be reached on Tuesday
when Russian President Vladimir Putin meets his Ukrainian
counterpart Petro Poroshenko for the first time in months.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who visited Kyiv on
Saturday to try to lay the ground-work for a peace deal, said
Tuesday’s talks were unlikely to produce a breakthrough.
Kyiv’s forces are trying to crush a pro-Moscow separatist
revolt in the east of Ukraine, and on Sunday intense artillery
fire could be heard around the main rebel bastion of Donetsk.
On Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv —
scene of protests that pushed out a Moscow-backed president in
February and precipitated the current crisis — President
Poroshenko reviewed columns of men and armoured vehicles.
Some of the troops in the march-past were shortly heading to
the front line in eastern Ukraine, Poroshenko said.
In an emotional speech, he said his country was fighting “a
war against external aggression, for Ukraine, for its freedom,
for its people, for independence”.
“It is clear that in the foreseeable future, unfortunately,
a constant military threat will hang over Ukraine. And we need
to learn not only to live with this, but also to be always
prepared to defend the independence of our country,” he said.
Poroshenko announced about $3 billion would be spent on
re-equipping the army in 2015-2017. Ukraine’s armed forces are
only a fraction of the size of those in Russia.
After Ukraine’s previous president, Viktor Yanukovich, fled
to Russia, Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March
and parts of the Russian-speaking east rebelled against Kyiv.
Kyiv and its Western allies accuse Moscow of funnelling
weapons and men secretly into eastern Ukraine to shore up the
struggling rebellion, a claim Moscow denies. Russia has called
for an urgent ceasefire to provide help to trapped civilians.
POWS PARADED
In separatist-held Donetsk, about 100 people introduced over
a public address system as Ukrainian prisoners-of-war were
marched through the city’s central Lenin Square on Sunday.
They looked dirty and unshaven and bowed their heads as they
passed. Some had bandaged arms and heads. They were guarded by
rebel fighters with guns, their bayonets fixed.
People who came to watch the parade shouted “fascists!” and
“murderers!” and some threw bottles at the POWs. Two
street-cleaning machines followed the column, spraying water on
to the street in a theatrical gesture to indicate the men were
unclean.
Earlier on Sunday, artillery shells hit the grounds of one
of Donetsk’s biggest hospitals. Authorities in Kyiv deny
targeting civilian areas.
“This is no independence day. This is a plague on our land,
the fascists who have taken control of Kyiv who are now shooting
at hospitals and morgues,” said Grigory, 71, at a display of
captured military hardware in central Donetsk.
Diplomats say Tuesday’s meeting between Putin and Poroshenko
in the Belarussian capital Minsk may provide the best chance yet
of ending a conflict that has left ties between Moscow and the
West at their most toxic since the Cold War and has sparked
sanctions that are hurting the Russian and European economies.
The two presidents last met in June in a frosty encounter in
Normandy, France, at commemorations to mark the World War Two
D-Day landings. They did not shake hands. Since then, the
momentum in the conflict has tilted in Ukraine’s favour.
With strong Western backing and progress on the battlefield,
Kyiv is now in a much stronger position. Putin, meanwhile, faces
the stark choice of a humiliating defeat for the rebels or
giving them direct help and so risking further sanctions that
will inflict deeper pain on his economy.
The meeting in Minsk “certainly won’t result in a
breakthrough,” Merkel told Germany’s ARD television. “But you
have to talk to each other if you want to find solutions.”
The European Union’s chief diplomat, Catherine Ashton, will
be at the meeting to help mediate. On Sunday, Ashton said the
meeting provided “an opportunity we should not miss”.
FIGHTING
The sound of shelling in Donetsk on Sunday was unusually
intense, with rebels saying the Ukrainian troops were trying to
score a victory to mark their national day.
Separatist commanders said they were holding off the attacks
and were launching their own counter-assaults.
Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the
self-proclaimed ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’, said his forces had
launched a counter-attack and were fighting to take the town of
Olenivka, about 20 km (12 miles) south of Donetsk.
“I don’t want to fight, I don’t want to kill anyone, but I
will fight to the last for my land,” he told reporters. “We want
to live the way we want to live on our own soil.”
The Ukrainian military authorities said they had been making
more advances on the battlefield, though the rebel collapse some
in Kyiv had predicted has not materialised.
Ukraine’s border guard service said there had been several
rounds of shelling into Ukraine from Russian artillery units,
echoing similar allegations made by NATO officials.
Officials in Kyiv said 722 people with Ukrainian government
forces had died to date, a jump from 568 announced on Aug. 11.
(Additional reporting by Natalia Zinets; and Alessandra
Prentice in Kyiv, Michael Shields in Vienna, Madeline Chambers
in Berlin, Anton Zverev and Maria Tsvetkova in Donetsk, Ukraine,
and Polina Devitt in Moscow; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing
by Gareth Jones)