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Ukraine Says 2 Fighter Jets Are Shot Down as Clashes Intensify Ukraine Says 2 Fighter Jets Are Shot Down as Clashes Intensify
(about 2 hours later)
KIEV, Ukraine — Fighting intensified in the rebel-controlled region of Ukraine on Wednesday, with military officials reporting that two Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jets had been shot down near the village of Dmytrivka in the east. KIEV, Ukraine — Two Ukrainian Su-25 fighter jets were shot down on Wednesday in eastern Ukraine near the Russian border. The planes were downed in an area of heavy fighting between government forces and Russian-backed separatists, near where a Malaysia Airlines jet was blown out of the sky on Thursday, killing 298 people and drawing international dismay.
Few details of the latest downings were available. But the news was reported as Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council in Kiev said the military operation to suppress the insurgents was advancing in the east, with government troops having retaken two cities in the Luhansk region as they continued an aggressive push from the north and west. The Ukrainian government said the two fighter jets had been brought down near the village of Dmytrivka, east of Donetsk and about five miles from the Russian border, where government troops have been pushing hard to cut off the flow of fighters and supplies from Russia to the insurgents.
Officials said rebels had blown up a road bridge, a railroad bridge and train tracks in the city of Gorlivka, and they reported continued fierce fighting along a section of the border with Russia that remains porous. Ukrainian forces are increasingly desperate to seal that border to prevent resupplies of weapons or new fighters from entering Ukraine. The government said that the pilots of the fighter jets ejected safely. Government forces and insurgents appeared to be racing on Wednesday to find them.
A Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, said Russia had strengthened its troop presence along the border and cross-border gunfire had increased. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian National Defense and Security Council, said the two jets had been hit by fire from the Russian side of the border. “The planes were shot down from Russian territory,” Mr. Lysenko said in a statement on Twitter.
The reported downing of the two fighter jets was a serious blow to the Ukrainian military, which has limited air power. The allegation, which could not be independently verified, carries potentially serious diplomatic consequences, given the accusations by Ukraine and the United States that Russia supplied insurgents with the SA-11 surface-to-air missile system that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
In the Netherlands, two military transport aircraft arrived at an air-base in Eindhoven at midafternoon on Wednesday, carrying 40 coffins with the first bodies of victims from Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down over eastern Ukraine last week. The aircraft were greeted by a minute’s silence from dignitaries and others, led by King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Andrei Purgin, a senior separatist leader in Donetsk, said rebel forces had shot down the two fighter planes using portable shoulder-fired missiles. He said that the planes had been in an active war zone, and that the Ukrainian military had continued to bomb rebel forces despite promises that military activity in the area would cease. “They haven’t stopped for one minute,” he said.
The solemn moment in bright sunlight was part of a day of national mourning over the Flight 17 disaster, which killed 298 people, two-thirds of them from the Netherlands. After a trumpeter played the Last Post, military pallbearers marched up a loading ramp to unload the coffins as motorcycle outriders escorted a convoy of 40 hearses across the tarmac. Ukrainian officials have said that two other military aircraft — an An-26 transport and another Su-25 fighter — were shot down last week with direct involvement by Russia. They said that the missile that destroyed the transport had been fired from Russian territory, and that the fighter was destroyed in a dogfight with a MiG-29 fighter that crossed into Ukrainian air space to engage Ukrainian aircraft. Russia denied both accusations, and the insurgents insisted that they had brought down the transport on their own.
The identities of those in wooden coffins aboard the Dutch and Australian military transports, which flew in from Kharkiv, Ukraine, were not known. None of the bodies collected from the crash site have been identified. Ukraine and Malaysia have authorized the Netherlands to identify and repatriate all the recovered remains, which could take months. The An-26 had been flying at an altitude of more than 10,000 feet, well beyond the range of the surface-to-air rockets previously fired by insurgents, including the munitions that destroyed an Ilyushin-76 military transport as it landed in Luhansk in mid-June, killing 49. Ukrainian officials said the destruction of the An-26 showed that the insurgents had obtained and were using powerful weapons like the SA-11 that is believed to have been used against the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Before the remains left the country, Ukrainian officials and foreign diplomats mixed tributes to the dead with angry demands that those responsible be brought to justice. Heavy ground combat on Wednesday made it difficult for journalists to approach Dmytrivka, where the two fighter jets were downed.
“This is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions,” an Australian representative, Angus Houston, said at the gathering, flanked by a Ukrainian military honor guard dressed in black uniforms. At a small checkpoint by a cornfield about six miles away, a rebel fighter who identified himself as a 41-year old coal miner said he saw the two planes come down about noon. He said the fighter jets had been flying low, apparently to drop a payload, when they were hit and the pilots bailed out. The man said rebel fighters were searching for the pilots in the surrounding fields.
“It is a hunt,” he said, looking to the east toward the site. “They’re lying in the corn. It could take all night.” As he spoke, more fighter jets buzzed overhead, but they did not drop any bombs.
The loss of the jets was a significant blow to the Ukrainian military, which has a limited amount of air power, much of it inherited from the breakup of the Soviet Union.
The incident was part of a wider intensification of fighting on Wednesday. Government troops retook two cities in the Luhansk region and continued to push aggressively from the north and west, officials said, while rebel forces blew up a road bridge, a railroad bridge and train tracks in the city of Gorlivka. Ukrainian forces are struggling hard to seal the porous border with Russia, not just near Dmytrivka but also further north at crossings that have been the scenes of fierce battles.
Mr. Lysenko, the Ukrainian military spokesman, said Russia had placed more troops along the border and that cross-border gunfire had increased.
The bodies of victims from Flight 17, which were relinquished on Tuesday by the rebels who control the crash site, began arriving on Wednesday at a military base in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Two military transport aircraft, one Dutch and one Australian, arrived there at midafternoon carrying 40 wooden coffins, which were greeted by a minute’s silence from dignitaries and others at the base, led by King Willem-Alexander, Queen Maxima and Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Two-thirds of the people on board the plane were from the Netherlands.
The identities of the bodies were not yet known. Ukraine and Malaysia have authorized the Netherlands to identify and repatriate all the recovered remains from the crash, which could take months.
Before the remains left the country, officials and foreign diplomats at the Ukrainian air base in Kharkiv mixed tributes to the dead with angry demands that those responsible for the downing of the plane be brought to justice.
“This is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions,” an Australian representative, Angus Houston, said at the gathering, flanked by a Ukrainian military honor guard dressed in black uniforms. Four coffins were carried by officers from the Kiev Military Academy, dressed in blue uniforms with yellow braid, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
The Ukrainian vice prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, said, “Those who are guilty for this terrorist act will be punished.”The Ukrainian vice prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, said, “Those who are guilty for this terrorist act will be punished.”
Mr. Groysman left no doubt that Ukraine believed that the guilty parties were not only pro-Russia rebels who control the territory in eastern Ukraine where the plane crashed, but also Russia, asserting, “Russian military personnel launched the missile that hit a civilian Malaysian aircraft.” Mr. Groysman left no doubt that Ukraine believed that the guilty parties included not only the insurgents in eastern Ukraine but also the Russian government. “Russian military personnel launched the missile that hit a civilian Malaysian aircraft,” he said. “We are today sending off innocents who were murdered.”
“We are today sending off innocents who were murdered,” he said. Foreign officials at the ceremony in Kharkiv also called for justice, but did not say who they blamed for the crash.
Officers from the Kiev Military Academy, dressed in blue uniforms with yellow braid — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — carried four wooden coffins into the plane, which took off at noon bound for the Netherlands with 16 bodies on board, according to Dutch officials. A second plane from Australia was due to take 24 more bodies, also to the Netherlands, later on Wednesday. The Russian government did not immediately comment on the downed fighter planes. But a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a forceful statement on Wednesday accusing the Ukrainian government of making false accusations against Russia, specifically in relation to the downed passenger jet.
Although foreign officials at the ceremony called for justice, they did not assign blame. That stood in contrast to Mr. Groysman, who denounced what he called “Russian aggression” against Ukraine. “Instead of cooperating with a thorough and unbiased international investigation into the causes of the accident, the results of which would then be made public, with maximum transparency, the Kiev authorities daily and hourly come up with new, absurd and absolutely groundless accusations against Russia,” said the spokesman, Aleksandr Lukashevich.
As the plane carrying the first bodies took off, a Ukrainian woman waved a hand-drawn sign reading “Judge Putin in the Hague,” a reference to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. He also accused Ukraine of obstructing the investigation into the crash, and of killing civilians during its military operations in the east.
The woman, Alexandra Kharchenko, a 39-year-old designer who lives in Kharkiv, said Mr. Putin should be called before an international tribunal. She accused him of encouraging and arming the pro-Russia separatists whom Ukraine and the United States have accused of firing the surface-to-air missile that downed the jet. “Kiev does not want to heed the voice of reason and agree on a cease-fire,” Mr. Lukashevich said. “Strikes using heavy weapons are being delivered on populated areas, including those in the direct vicinity of the plane crash site.”
“I just want to draw attention to who is ultimately responsible for this crime,” Ms. Kharchenko said.
The Kremlin and the rebels have repeatedly denied any role in shooting down the plane and have said the blame lies with Ukraine.
A representative for the Dutch government at the farewell ceremony in Kharkiv called for patience in assessing exactly what happened. He cautioned that even identifying the bodies — a task that will be carried out by Dutch specialists at a laboratory in the Netherlands — would be a long and laborious process.
The bodies, held for days by the rebels, were delivered to Kharkiv by rail on Tuesday, along with the data and voice recorders from the plane. It will take at least several days for experts to unload five refrigerated railway cars at a Soviet-era tank factory in the city, place the bodies in coffins and fly them to the Netherlands.
“Today your journey home begins,” said Hans Docter, a Dutch representative. “It will still be a long journey. We have started a process that will take time. We have to do this right. The eyes of the world are upon us.”
In Britain, the Department for Transportation confirmed in a statement Wednesday that Dutch investigators had delivered the data and voice recorders to the department’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
Under international rules, Ukraine, as the country where the accident took place, would normally be first in line to lead the inquiry, followed by Malaysia, as the country in which the aircraft was registered. Both governments exercised their authority to delegate the responsibility to another country.