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Idled Russian Aid Convoy Gets Back on the Road to Ukraine Ukrainian Troops Press Rebels in Their Eastern Strongholds
(about 7 hours later)
DONETSK, Russia — After nearly a week of inaction, a Russian aid convoy destined for the besieged, rebel-controlled Ukrainian city of Luhansk rumbled to life on Wednesday, with 16 of its trucks passing through a Russian border checkpoint. DONETSK, Ukraine — With street fights and artillery barrages, the Ukrainian military pressed its advance on Wednesday on the two eastern provincial capitals held by pro-Russian separatists in a day of violence that killed 52 civilians and Ukrainian soldiers and an unknown number of rebels.
Before heading to Luhansk, though, the trucks still have to be checked by the Russian border service, Ukrainian border guards and representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Sergei Karavaytsev, an officer in Russia’s Emergencies Ministry, said in a telephone interview. In one of the heaviest artillery attacks yet on the center of Donetsk, the larger of the capitals, shells struck street kiosks and residential apartment buildings near the stadium of the Shatyorsk soccer club, in the city’s heart. Fighting on the outskirts, particularly around the strategic town of Ilovaysk, a transportation hub, has also flared in recent days.
There is no telling how long that might take, he said, nor did he know whether there were guarantees of safe passage from the Ukrainian government or the rebels who control both the border and the road to Luhansk. The fighting has intensified as the Ukrainian and Russian leaders prepare for a meeting in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday to explore a diplomatic solution to the conflict, suggesting the sides are maneuvering to achieve the strongest possible military position before then.
However, Red Cross officials said they had received guarantees of security overnight from parties to the fighting along the road to Luhansk, a spokesman for the agency said, and were making final preparations to get the convoy underway. In Luhansk, the other remaining separatist stronghold, government forces have now gained control of “significant parts” of the city after days of street fighting, Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security Council, told reporters in Kiev.
A Red Cross team that left Geneva on Tuesday had deployed to eastern Ukraine on Wednesday and driven to Luhansk to check that the roads to be used by the convoy were passable, Ewan Watson, a Geneva-based spokesman, said in a telephone interview. Though block-to-block fighting began in Luhansk late last week, the government’s claim of controlling areas there could not be independently confirmed. In a brief telephone interview Wednesday morning, a human rights researcher in the city said he had seen no sign of the Ukrainian Army so far.
The contents of the trucks will have to be checked by Ukrainian border officials in the presence of Red Cross staff, Mr. Watson said, adding, “We’re still waiting for the final go-ahead before inspection starts.” Luhansk, which is about 12 miles from the Russian border and has been cut off from water and electricity for more than two weeks, is the intended destination for a Russian aid convoy of about 270 trucks that has been stalled on the Russian side of the border for days as the Kiev government has declined to approve the crossing.
As an added complication, though, the Ukrainian government reported Wednesday that it had wrested control of significant parts of Luhansk from the rebels, after prolonged shelling and days of street fights that have left at least 52 people dead. If those reports are confirmed, Ukraine, which has its own aid convoy for Luhansk, might not see any need for the Russian convoy, which Ukraine has long viewed with suspicion. For the first time on Wednesday, 16 of the white trucks drove through a Russian border checkpoint around sunset, but it was unclear whether they would proceed immediately across the short no-man’s land and into Ukrainian territory.
Two Russian Orthodox priests visited the parking lot in the Russian city of Donetsk where the trucks have sat for five days and blessed them around sunset. One of the priests, Oleg Orlov, from Moscow, said that he offered “final words” for the drivers of the trucks. He said that far-right Ukrainian saboteurs may try to destroy the convoy. Sergey Karavaytsev, an official in the Russian Emergencies Ministry, said by telephone that the trucks would be checked by the Russian border service, Ukrainian border guards and representatives of the International Red Cross. He said that he did not know how long the inspections would take, but that the trucks could continue to Luhansk afterward. Russia has said the trucks are carrying water, canned meats, baby food and other goods.
“Man proposes, but God disposes,” he said, asking the men to put their faith in god. “I believe that they will get to Lugansk.” Red Cross officials said they had received guarantees of security overnight from parties to the fighting along the road to Luhansk and were making final preparations to get the convoy underway.
Russia has said the trucks are carrying water, canned meats, baby food and other products, though reporters who have been shown the trucks say that many are only half-filled. Ukrainian officials have criticized the column as a ploy to break the Ukrainian military initiative, and have speculated that the white trucks might be parked near military targets to forestall attacks. They say that many of the trucks are only half-filled and that others carry items all but useless to a besieged city, like a reported cargo of 30 tons of salt.
The first truck left shortly after 8 p.m. local time with an Orthodox icon on the dashboard propped up against the windshield. In the two cities, the death toll rose quickly Wednesday. The Donetsk mayor’s office reported 34 residents had died in shelling in the last 24 hours as of noon, and then updated the tally with nine more deaths in the afternoon barrages. Mr. Lysenko said nine soldiers were killed in the past day in Ilovaysk.
The aid convoy left Moscow on Aug. 12 but has been stuck for days at the border near the Russian town of Rostov amid fears on the part of authorities in Kiev that it was a cover for Russian military intervention to help pro-Russian rebels under increasing pressure from Ukrainian forces. Residents in areas hit by the shelling describe terrifying barrages that crashed into buildings and courtyards seemingly arbitrarily.
The Red Cross was satisfied with the details Moscow provided about the supplies, which include food, water and generators, and the Russian and Ukrainian governments have agreed on procedures for the convoy to cross the border, Mr. Watson said. Shells landed for a second day in a neighborhood of Makiyivka, near Donetsk, about a mile from a separatist checkpoint. One blew out the windows in the bedroom of Anna Zyukova’s 2-year-old son, Vladislav, leaving pockmarks of shrapnel sprayed into the wallpaper behind his crib. “Thank God we got him out yesterday” to a relative’s home away from the shelling, Ms. Zyukova said.
The convoy of roughly 260 trucks, each with one Russian driver, will cross the border in batches, escorted by Red Cross officials traveling in their own vehicles, Mr. Watson said. The trucks will unload their cargo in Luhansk and local Red Cross teams will deliver the aid from there to communities cut off from access to basic supplies by fierce fighting. At the rebel checkpoint, a commander who offered only his nickname, Chaika, or the Seagull, said he was as baffled as anybody by the scattershot shelling into residential districts. His position was in a forest, away from homes.
“We are soldiers and we are fighting,” he said. “We understand when they shoot at us. But why are they firing at the residential areas? We don’t know.”
In other instances in Donetsk, hints of the intended targets are easier to ascertain. Minutes after shells hit Chelyuskiatsev Street near the soccer stadium, rebels towed a howitzer and a Grad truck-mounted rocket launcher out of the area, driving slowly past crying and panicked civilians surveying the damage.
The United Nations says that more than 2,000 people have died in the conflict here since mid-April, and that the pace of civilian deaths is increasing.