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Russia Says It’s Helping Restore Cease-Fire in Ukraine Ukrainian Forces Battle Russian-Backed Rebels in East
(about 1 hour later)
MOSCOW — Russia’s foreign minister said Wednesday that Moscow would seek to restore peace in southeastern Ukraine, where renewed violence this week between the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists has left an internationally brokered cease-fire in tatters. KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Shelling from both Ukrainian military and rebel separatist positions continued Wednesday over a remote border checkpoint northwest of Luhansk that Ukraine said was seized Monday by Russian troops, a chief spokesman for the Ukrainian military said.
The minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, made the remarks ahead of a meeting with the foreign ministers of Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia in Berlin on Wednesday evening. Mr. Lavrov said Russia had secured a promise from the pro-Russian separatists to honor a previous cease-fire line established in Belarus in September and to pull their artillery beyond firing range of government troops. With President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine claiming that thousands of additional Russian troops had crossed into Ukraine and engaged directly with Ukrainian forces, attention has shifted from the battle over the battered airport at Donetsk to this fresh front on the main road to the city of Luhansk, 90 miles northeast of Donetsk.
“It is the same demarcation line that was recognized and insisted upon by the Ukrainian side,” Mr. Lavrov said at a news conference in Moscow. “The militias are also in agreement. We actively facilitated this.” Lt. Col. Roman Turovets, a Ukrainian military spokesman at the base here, the main one in the conflict area, said that Ukraine believed the soldiers it was engaging near the small town of Krymske, northwest of Luhansk, were highly trained Russian regulars, based on their tactics, their weaponry and on intelligence.
Even as Mr. Lavrov spoke in Moscow about de-escalating the conflict, Ukrainian officials accused Russia of secretly sending thousands of Russian regular troops across the border to back the rebels. According to a Ukrainian military spokesman, those troops had already engaged Ukrainian Army troops on Tuesday evening. Checkpoint 31, on an access road into Luhansk, had been bombarded by shelling for most of Tuesday, Colonel Turovets said. Then late in the afternoon darkness, and under cover of heavy fog, the suspected Russian forces were able to drive away the Ukrainians, who suffered no casualties.
In an appearance on Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, put the number of Russian troops currently on Ukrainian soil at 9,000. In response, Ukraine began to shell the position and there was an exchange of fire that continued through Wednesday.
“If this is not aggression, what is?” Mr. Poroshenko said during a speech. Russia, as it has since the conflict started last year, denied any involvement in the Ukraine fighting others than the possible participation of Russian “volunteers” wishing to aid the separatists. The foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, challenged Ukraine to “present the proof” if Russian troops were really in Ukraine.
At the news conference in Moscow, Mr. Lavrov said that Western governments had not provided evidence to back accusations that Russia was aiding the rebels. “The people who attacked, they were very professional,” said Colonel Turovets, the Ukrainian spokesman. “Our troops could tell they were well-trained, from how they moved, how they regrouped.”
“I say this every time. If you are saying this with such surety, then show us the facts,” Mr. Lavrov said. “Nobody is able to show us any facts. Or maybe they don’t want to.” In Berlin on Wednesday, Mr. Lavrov and the foreign ministers of Ukraine, France and Germany were scheduled to meet to try to shore up the crumbling cease-fire in the east. Before the talks began, however, Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, said she did not want to “get hopes up too much.”
Amid the diplomatic standoff, violence in the Donbass region has erupted anew. Shelling in the city of Donetsk and the surrounding area has left dozens dead, including at least 12 people on a passenger bus last week. Rebel troops late last week overran Donetsk International Airport, an army toehold in the city, and shelling has intensified throughout the region. Russia has proposed that both the separatists and the Ukrainian Army withdraw heavy weaponry from a buffer zone along the front line, to defuse the tension. Ukrainian officials have rebuffed this proposal, saying it is Russia that has been sending artillery and other heavy weapons into the east all along.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told reporters on Wednesday that successful meeting in Berlin could lead to a gathering of the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia in Kazakhstan, a framework for negotiations that has been called the “Normandy format.” On the ground in eastern Ukraine, an Associated Press reporter on Wednesday saw pro-Russian rebels driving six self-propelled howitzers, four Grad rocket launchers and 15 tanks toward the front and the battle for Checkpoint 31, not away from it. The tanks were described as in pristine condition.
But she added that she did not “want to get hopes up too much.” Also on Wednesday, separatists blew up a bridge near the battle for Checkpoint 31, adding to the dozens of bridges already destroyed by both sides in the swirl of retreats and feints over nine months of fighting.
“It is clear that the cease-fire is getting more and more fragile,” Ms. Merkel said. On Tuesday, a strategic railroad bridge was blown up in Zaporozhye region, far from the front lines, halting at least temporarily shipments of iron ore to steel mills in the port city of Mariupol.
The crisis in Ukraine, along with the annexation of Crimea, has driven relations between Russia and the West to their lowest level since the Cold War, and the talk on both sides has toughened. At the World Economic Forum in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, the Ukrainian president, Mr. Poroshenko, said he would cut short his visit to help oversee the fighting in the east. In a speech, Mr. Poroshenko held up a dented, shrapnel-pocked panel of a public bus in which 13 people died from a rebel rocket strike, trying to drive home to European businessmen, who have grumbled about Western sanctions, the human cost of the war.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the personal spokesman to President Vladimir V. Putin, said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday that the West is “trying to topple Putin.” Mr. Poroshenko said 9,000 Russian troops were fighting on Ukrainian soil.
“In the West they are trying to squeeze out Putin, to isolate him in international politics, to throttle Russia economically due to their interests, to topple Putin, at the same time they urge him to settle the crisis in the neighboring country,” Mr. Peskov told the popular daily Argumenty i Fakty. “If this is not aggression, what is?” he said.
“If it were not for Crimea, they would think up another excuse” to attack Russia, Mr. Peskov added. Ukraine also on Wednesday began enforcing a new set of strict rules for crossing between territory controlled by the government in Kiev and territory controlled by the separatists in eastern Ukraine. Only people holding new passes issued by the Ukrainian government would be allowed to pass through any of the seven main crossing points, and those trying to get across on secondary roads would be regarded as in violation of Ukrainian military rules, Colonel Turovets said.
The new passes, however, could be applied for at only a handful of police stations just outside the conflict zone and would then require a 10-day wait before they could be issued. Only civilians with a clear reason for crossing the border would be given the passes, Ukraine officials said
The effect would be to seal up the border in the coming days, if the new rules are enforced, but would do nothing to shore up the porous border with Russia.
“What people don’t always realize is that there are several hundred kilometers of border with Russia that is not controlled, " Colonel Turovets said, allowing Russian drug smugglers and potential terrorists to come into Ukraine. “So that is why we put tougher conditions on this line,” he said.
If that caused more hardship for civilians inside the conflict zone, that was the fault of the Russians and not the Ukrainian military, he said.
“Everybody understands if there were no Russian mercenaries in Ukraine then this war would have been over long ago,” he said.