A couple and their dog in the village of Nikishino in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR). Only a handful stayed during the fighting here and as people returned to the village counting some 450 houses. They found some 240 of those had been reduced to rubble or had been destroyed beyond repair. The lack of building material and limited emergency food deliveries saw mostly elderly returning and sheltering in their still habitable outhouses.
Reuters/Kiev
Ukraine is planning an operation involving tens of thousands of police to guard against any attack by separatists or Russian agents during World War Two commemorations next month, security chiefs said yesterday.
Tension is mounting in the capital and other cities amid an increase in rebel attacks in the east. Kiev said one Ukrainian serviceman had been killed in the past 24 hours, in an attack near the airport in Donetsk. The airport fell to the rebels earlier this year.
The killings in Kiev of two pro-Russian activists, a journalist, by what appeared to be professional hitmen, have further driven up tension in the run-up to May 8-9 celebrations of victory in 1945, which traditionally bring thousands of people on to the streets.
Ukraine, along with most European Union members and the United States, is boycotting festivities in Moscow marking 70 years since the allied victory over Nazi Germany, because of Moscow’s role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine in which more than 6,100 people have been killed.
But it will hold victory celebrations of its own in Kiev and other cities.
“We cannot trust the word of Russia and their terrorists at all. We must be ready to give a clear, appropriate and strong reply to protect people on the streets, provide warnings of terrorist attacks and bring those guilty of crimes to justice,” prime minister Arseny Yatseniuk told security chiefs.
Calling for heightened security measures, particularly in large cities, Yatseniuk said Russia was spending a lot of money on financing networks to stir up trouble.
“We are fighting a state which has planned dozens of terrorist acts and we must do all we can to head them off. Social, political and ideological destabilisation — that’s the aim of Russia.” he said.
Interior minister Arsen Avakov said 10,000 guards were ensuring security at 3,300 of the most sensitive facilities in the country, including nuclear power stations.
A total of 20,000 extra security and police would be drafted in for the May festivities. “We are ready to ensure calm,” he said.
Defence minister Stepan Poltorak, speaking of the situation in the east, said “terrorist threats” were growing and protection of arms and military equipment arsenals and depots would be stepped up.
“In the past 24 hours, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and another one wounded” in the village of Pisky near the bombed-out airport of separatist stronghold Donetsk, army spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a news conference.
It was the first combat death recorded among the Ukrainian forces since April 15, when the army said one soldier was killed. Another six had been killed and 12 injured the day before that.
Lysenko said “the situation is stable but tense” overall.
European OSCE observers reported ongoing heavy arms fire by both sides over recent weeks despite a February ceasefire agreement.
Lysenko said the pro-Russian forces had fired at Ukrainian pro-government positions with tanks and 120mm mortars, types of heavy arms banned under the February ceasefire agreement.
With spring arriving, the observers hope a fresh surge in fighting can be avoided while a solution is sought to the deadly conflict — particularly in the village of Shyrokyne, near the strategic government-held city of Mariupol.
The Ukrainians military’s press department said Shyrokyne had been targeted by tank fir.
The OSCE said Monday the Ukrainian military had drawn up proposals for a withdrawal of forces on both sides from Shyrokyne, where it says the few dozen civilians who have not fled lack food and water.
The plan has yet to be approved by Kiev and separatist leaders.
The United Nations says more than 6,100 people have been killed in the conflict in Ukraine over the past year.
Kiev and the West say there is widespread evidence that Russia is arming and sending fighters to help the separatists, who have taken control of parts of the east — a charge Russia denies.
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko yesterday met in Geneva the Red Cross chief Peter Maurer, a spokesman for the organisation said.
Maurer called on Poroshenko to ease customs formalities on the Ukrainian border to allow more aid trucks to enter, the spokesman said.
Since January, the Red Cross has delivered more than 3,000 tonnes of emergency supplies to the rebel-held eastern regions of Lugansk and Donetsk and given aid to more than 167,000 people on both sides of the frontline.
The EU announced yesterday payment of €250mn in aid loans to Ukraine, bringing the total to 1.6bn.
The European Union promised Ukraine political and economic support in exchange for reforms as part of an Association Accord sealed last year which sparked the conflict and was bitterly opposed by Russia.
The aid payment comes ahead of an EU-Ukraine summit in Kiev on Monday which will highlight those ties.
“The objective of the macro-financial assistance is to address Ukraine’s urgent financing needs, while supporting Ukraine’s economic stabilisation and reform agenda,” the European Commission said in a statement.
“This MFA operation in Ukraine has supported in particular reforms in the areas of public finance management and anti-corruption, trade and taxation, the energy sector and the financial sector,” it added.
“Europe stands together with Ukraine during these difficult times, both politically and financially,” EU Commissioner for the Euro Valdis Dombrovskis said.
The 28-nation EU, which includes several east European states once ruled like Ukraine from Moscow, agreed in January an additional aid programme worth 1.8bn euros as the economy teetered on the brink.
The EU and international lenders have backed Kiev since pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in February 2014 after he ditched the EU Association Agreement.
Poland announced yesterday it will hold exclusive talks with the US government on a multi-billion-euro air defence missile contract seen as key to military upgrades accelerated in response to tensions with neighbouring Russia.
President Bronislaw Komorowski announced the decision. The US company Raytheon’s Patriot system and another system by the Eurosam consortium — that includes MBDA France, MBDA Italy and France’s Thales Group — had been in the running for the estimated €5bndeal.
“The government has chosen to decide the matter of the Wisla (air defence) program through direct negotiations with the US government,” Komorowski said, adding the defence minister would start negotiations in Washington this May.
He also told reporters that Warsaw selected multipurpose helicopters from Europe’s Airbus for testing, in the context of a tender to replace Poland’s Soviet-era military choppers.
US manufacturer Sikorsky and British-Italian group AgustaWestland were also vying for the multi-billion euro tender to supply dozens of helicopters to Poland’s army. Both contracts are part of the NATO-member’s effort to overhaul its military equipment to the tune of around 140 billion zloty (35 billion euros, $37 billion) over 10 years.
Poland also plans to acquire armoured personnel carriers, submarines and drones during the revamp, which Warsaw has sped up because of concerns in the region over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and backing for rebels in eastern Ukraine. Poland, a central European powerhouse of 38mn people, joined Nato in 1999, a decade after shedding communism. It became a member of the European Union in 2004.
