People shout slogans during a rally in front of Poroshenko’s office in Kiev. — AFP photo
Washington accuses Moscow of sending troops to fight on Ukrainian territory as well as air defence system
DONETSK, Ukraine: The United States accused Russia yesterday of being directly involved in the Ukraine conflict after pro-Kremlin rebels seized swathes of territory from government forces in a new southeastern front.
“An increasing number of Russian troops are intervening directly in fighting on Ukrainian territory,” the US ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt wrote on Twitter.
“Russia has also sent its newest air defence systems including the SA-22 into eastern Ukraine and is now directly involved in the fighting,” he said.
After weeks of government offensives that have seen troops push deep into the last rebel bastions in the industrial east of Ukraine, the tide has turned dramatically in the four-month conflict.
Kiev called on Nato for help after a rebel counter-offensive from the southeast border with Russia appeared to smash through an army blockade around the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and threaten the government-held port city of Mariupol.
Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for having ‘deliberately unleashed a war in Europe’ and called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting, a called echoed by Lithuania.
A top rebel leader, Alexander Zakharchenko, on Wednesday admitted Russian troops were fighting alongside his insurgents, but said they were on ‘holiday’ after volunteering to join the battle.
There has been increasing concern in Kiev and the West of Russia’s direct involvement in the conflict – a charge Moscow has repeatedly denied.
The spiralling tensions come after Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko and Putin on Tuesday held their first meeting in three months but failed to achieve any concrete breakthrough despite talk of a peace roadmap.
French President Francois Hollande warned it would be ‘intolerable and unacceptable’ if Russian troops were on the ground after German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded an explanation from Putin over the reports.
European security body OSCE called a special meeting to discuss ‘Russia violations in Ukraine’ at 0900 GMT.
A volunteer pro-Kiev commander on Wednesday said government troops were surrounded in the key transport hub of Ilovaysk southeast of Donetsk towards the Russian border.
Ukraine’s military also claimed a Russian battalion had set up its headquarters near a village in the same area.
Russian has repeatedly denied it is involved in the insurrection in the former Soviet state, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday the Kremlin was ‘not interested in breaking up’ Ukraine.
AFP journalists reported heavy shelling in Donetsk yesterday, with local authorities saying 11 civilians had lost their lives in 24 hours.
The United Nations estimates the conflict has killed over 2,200 people and forced more than 400,000 to flee since April.
AFP journalists on Wednesday saw signs of a hasty retreat by Ukrainian troops after they seemed to abandon a key road southeast of Donetsk to the Russian border.
Locals told AFP the troops left on Monday after shelling from the direction of the Russian border about 30 kilometres away.
Ukraine’s military conceded that “militants together with Russian occupants” had taken control of Starobesheve, some 30 kilometres from Donetsk, as well as a string of villages near Novoazovsk, a town close the Russian border on the Azov Sea where clashes had raged for days.
Commander Semen Semenchenko, head of the pro-Kiev volunteer ‘Donbass battalion,’ posted on Facebook that troops were trapped by rebels in Ilovaysk and were running out of ammunition.
On Wednesday, Yatsenyuk said it was time for Nato to act, calling for ‘practical help and … crucial decisions’ when it holds a summit in Wales next week.
Russia vehemently opposes closer ties between Ukraine and Nato. Concerns that Kiev could be drawn closer into the Western security alliance are seen as the main motivation behind Russia’s actions in recent months.
Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview Wednesday that the alliance was preparing a rapid response unit to deploy forces swiftly in eastern Europe in the face of what he has warned was a major Russian troop buildup.
After Tuesday’s meeting with Putin, Poroshenko said all sides had ‘without exception’ agreed to his peace plan, and that he and the Russian leader had discussed the “necessity of closing Ukraine’s borders” to prevent the movement of ‘equipment, mercenaries, and ammunition.’
But Putin insisting discussing any ceasefire was not Moscow’s ‘business’ but an internal Ukrainian affair.
He played down reports that 10 Russian paratroopers had been captured on Ukrainian soil, backing his military’s claims that they had strayed across the border by accident. But opposition media in Russia reported on hushed-up funerals for two elite paratroopers, suggesting they had been killed in action in Ukraine.
A group of wives and mothers of Russian paratroopers plan to hold a rally yesterday demanding authorities pull their loved ones from Ukraine. — AFP