An officer of the Security Service of Ukraine stands next to a monitor showing the man who has been charged with terrorism.
Reuters
Kiev
Ukraine’s state security service yesterday named a Russian army major who was detained by Ukrainian servicemen at the weekend with a cargo of military equipment in eastern Ukraine and said he had been charged with terrorism.
State security chief Vasyl Hrytsak told reporters that Vladimir Starkov, 37, from Russia’s Kirov region, had admitted immediately he was a serving soldier in the Russian armed forces after he was stopped in a truck at a checkpoint 22km outside the separatist-held city of Donetsk.
Ukraine is likely to use the case to bolster its charges that Russia is continuing its involvement in the 15-month-long conflict and undermining a peace agreement worked out in Minsk, Belarus, in February.
While supporting the separatists’ cause, the Kremlin denies it is supplying them with arms and equipment and that its forces are engaged in the conflict in Ukraine’s east.
When Ukraine captured two Russian soldiers in May, Russia said the two men had quit their special forces unit to go to Ukraine of their own volition.
In a video released by the SBU state security agency, Starkov said that after arriving for service in Russia’s Rostov region he was ordered to go to Ukraine as a military adviser to the rebels.
“They (the commanders) place you before an accomplished fact that you will serve in the DNR or the LNR (rebels’ Donetsk or Luhansk people republics),” Starkov said.
SBU officials say Starkov and another man who said he was a separatist fighter lost their way and driven towards Ukrainian forces manning the checkpoint.
An SBU official told Reuters that Starkov had been accused of terrorism.
A fragile ceasefire, though punctuated by occasional clashes, largely seems to be holding while the sides withdraw heavy weapons from a buffer zone. But each side accuses the other of failing to honour the Minsk agreements. More than 6,500 people have been killed in the conflict.
Speaking in the western city of Lviv on Wednesday, President Petro Poroshenko repeated that all Russian forces had to be withdrawn from Ukraine.
“Russian forces must get out of Ukraine’s territory. State sovereignty must be renewed in the uncontrolled part of the Ukrainian-Russian border,” he said.
Heavily indebted Ukraine may borrow $1bn in November via a new sale of US-backed bonds, part of a broader international support package Kiev expects to receive by the end of the year.
The finance ministry said yesterday it anticipated international assistance worth more than $3.2bn up to the end of 2015, including $1 billion of US.uarantees in November.
It also expects to receive two credit payments of $500mn a piece from the World Bank in August and September and €600mn from the European Commission.
“It may be a new $1bn issue of a US-backed Eurobond, not earlier than in November,” said a ministry source.
The finance ministry could not immediately confirm or deny the report of a possible bond sale.
Washington announced earlier this year that it could provide up $2bn in loan guarantees to near-bankrupt Ukraine.
Kiev used the first tranche of the guarantees to back a $1bn five-year Eurobond issue in May. Citigroup, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley led the deal.
Ukraine’s budget has swallowed up $4.7bn of external financing since the start of the year.
Major donors to the country said financing would be contingent on the former Soviet republic remaining on track to meet the conditions of its loan programme from the International Monetary Fund.
The IMF approved a $17.5bn bailout programme in March to support reforms in Ukraine, whose economy has been damaged by a 15-month military conflict with Russia-backed separatists.
Kiev expects the lender to decide on July 31 whether to disburse a second tranche of financial aid worth $1.7bn. Ukraine has so far received $5bn from the IMF.
