Russia Expands Ukraine Military Presence as Rebels Killed
Ukraine said Russia is expanding its military presence in rebel-held areas as pro-Russian fighters attacked Ukrainian forces with artillery after as many as 200 separatists were killed.
“The war is not over yet,” Igor Plotniskiy, the newly-elected head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic said in video statement televised and posted on the LPR website. The LPR wants “maximal integration with Russia,” he said.
Ukraine said yesterday its forces killed the rebels at Donetsk Airport in the biggest separatist loss since a Sept. 5 truce. Russia sent tanks and military vehicles across the border into rebel areas, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said yesterday. The U.S. State Department and Pentagon, while saying Russia is massing troops and armor on its side of the border, said they couldn’t confirm a Russian tank incursion.
Russia continues to increase its forces deployed in rebel areas, Ukrainian military spokesman Volodymyr Polevyi said today in Kiev. He said three government soldiers were killed and 15 were wounded in fighting over the past 24 hours.
The conflict is threatening to escalate back into the open separatist war that broke out after the February ouster of Russian-backed president Viktor Yanukovych and Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine a month later.
A pro-Russian militant casts his ballot during voting in Novoazovsk, Donetsk region.... Read More
At least 4,035 people have been killed and 9,336 wounded in eastern Ukraine in the fighting, the United Nations says.
‘Flaring Up’
Animosity between the government in Kiev and pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk rose this week after the separatists held Nov. 2 elections condemned by the U.S. and European Union as illegitimate and a cease-fire violation. While they’ve blamed Russia for inciting the conflict by delivering cash, weapons and fighters to the region, Putin says his country isn’t militarily involved.
“The separatists and their Russian supporters are renewing the conflict after pausing for elections,” Joerg Forbrig, senior program officer at the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. in Berlin, said by phone. “The war’s intensity is flaring up because Putin finds it hard stop the aggression given economic deprivations and nationalist expectations at home.”
Truce Breakers
Both sides have accused each other of breaking the truce agreed in Minsk, Belarus, with the Ukrainian government saying it’s suffered more than 100 killed and about 600 wounded since the cease-fire came into force. The artillery strikes at the Donetsk airport yesterday were a response to rebel shelling with surface-to-surface Grad missiles, mortars and howitzers that killed five soldiers and wounded 16, Lysenko said.
“Four separatist tanks, two armored personnel carriers, two howitzers, and an infantry combat vehicle were destroyed, and up to 200 insurgents were killed,” Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said on Facebook. The death toll wasn’t independently confirmed.
Putin said Nov. 5 that Ukraine’s “civil war” isn’t subsiding as cities continue to come under shelling and the civilian death toll rises. Lysenko said 32 tanks, 16 howitzers, and 30 trucks with ammunition and manpower crossed the border from Russia into Luhansk yesterday. Andrei Bobrun, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, wouldn’t immediately comment when reached by phone in Moscow.
Ruble Falls
The ruble has fallen 30 percent against the dollar this year, the world’s second-worst performing currency behind Ukraine’s hryvnia. It retreated 7.7 percent this week and traded at 46.81 per dollar at 6 p.m. yesterday in Moscow.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told German Chancellor Angela Merkel during a telephone call today that “a significant deviation from the Minsk protocol is leading to further escalation in the conflict,” according to a statement on the website of Poroshenko’s office today. Both repeated a call for a total cease-fire, Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said in a separate statement.
Merkel expressed “serious concern about recent reports on renewed Russian troop movements into Ukrainian territory,” Seibert said.
In August, according to NATO and Ukraine, Russian forces helped rebels in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions wage a counteroffensive to break out after they were encircled by Ukraine’s army.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries have also said Russia is probing their borders. NATO fighter jets intercepted a Russian military aircraft over the Baltic Sea, the latest in a series of similar incidents that have grown in frequency. NATO says its jets have intercepted Russian aircraft 100 times this year, three times last year’s total.
Ukraine’s military said Russia’s air force had put some of its units on high alert. A spokesman for Russia’s armed forces said by phone that he wasn’t able to comment
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/ukraine-truce-vanishes-as-government-says-200-rebels-dead.html
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