Ukraine and Russia blamed each other yesterday for a surge in fighting in eastern Ukraine in recent days that has led to the highest casualty toll in weeks and cut off power and water to thousands of civilians on the front line.
The Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists accuse each other of launching offensives in the government-held industrial town of Avdiivka and firing heavy artillery in defiance of the two-year-old Minsk ceasefire deal.
Eight Ukrainian troops have been killed and 26 wounded since fighting intensified on Sunday – the heaviest losses for the military since mid-December, according to government figures.
“The current escalation in Donbass is a clear indication of Russia’s continued blatant disregard of its commitments under the Minsk agreements with a view of preventing the stabilisation of the situation,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
The peace deal was agreed in February 2015, but international security monitors report ceasefire violations on a daily basis, including regular gun and mortar fire.
The latest clashes mark the first significant escalation in Ukraine since the inauguration of US President Donald Trump, whose call for better relations with Moscow has alarmed Kiev while the conflict remains unresolved.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko underscored the urgency of the situation by cutting short a visit to Berlin on Monday and convened an emergency meeting of his National Security and Defence Council.
Ukrainian authorities said that they were prepared for a possible evacuation of Avdiivka’s 16,000 residents, many of whom have little or no access to utilities after shelling hit supply infrastructure.
“Right now, there is no power. We have not resolved problems with heating homes, and the gas pipe has been shattered,” local Ukrainian army unit spokeswoman Olena Mokrynchuk told AFP.
The town’s military administrator Freedon Vekua told AFP he was preparing for a possible evacuation of the town that sits just north of the rebels’ de facto capital of Donetsk because of the power outage.
“The issue of an evacuation has not been decided fully. We see it as our very last resort because there is still a chance of restoring heating,” said Vekua.
The town’s heating is provided by a coke plant that has been heavily damaged by the falling shells.
Plant director Musa Magomedov said it would be incredibly difficult to resume gas production were the factory’s generators shut down.
That would leave Avdiivka without a source of local power and uncertainty about its future.
The fighting has prevented repairs being carried out, Magomedov said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross’s Ukraine delegation tweeted that there was no water, electricity or heating in the town and the temperature was -18° Celsius.
“Hostilities continue and people start to lose hope,” it added.
Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign ministry said Ukrainian government troops had launched deadly offensives on rebel positions and warned that the region was “on the verge of humanitarian and ecological catastrophe”.
Earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the Ukrainian authorities of organising the attacks as a ruse to try to distract attention from domestic and other problems.
He said the Kremlin was “extremely worried” but had “reliable information” that renegade units of pro-Kiev fighters were in fact responsible for the initial attacks.
However, an AFP reporter saw the separatists shell the town of about 20,000 people with repeated rounds of Grad multiple rocket systems and artillery fire from the early morning.
Close to 10,000 people have been killed since fighting between Ukrainian troops and rebels seeking independence from Kiev erupted in April 2014.
Ukraine and Nato accuse the Kremlin of supporting the rebels with troops and weapons.
The Kremlin denies backing the insurgents and only admits that Russian “volunteers” and off-duty soldiers have entered the warzone of their own free will.
The US and European Union have imposed sanctions on Russia over the conflict, as well as for its annexation of Crimea.




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