Amid doubts, truce in Ukraine appears to largely hold
Amid doubts, truce in Ukraine appears to largely hold
(about 11 hours later)
ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — A newly declared cease-fire in eastern Ukraine appeared to mostly hold through the night Sunday, though both Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels had traded accusations of violations by the morning.
KLYNOVE, Ukraine — A new cease-fire between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels held together Sunday relatively unscathed except in the one place it may matter most: the area around Debaltseve, site of the heaviest recent fighting.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and pro-Russian rebel leaders ordered their fighters to hold fire just after midnight Sunday, bringing a tenuous pause to fighting that had been rapidly escalating in recent days, with violence ratcheting up particularly strongly since the two sides agreed Thursday to the midnight deadline in peace talks in Minsk, Belarus.
Sounds of artillery fire and shelling over Debaltseve could be heard clearly Sunday from a stretch of highway about 20 miles to the northwest. The city, a rail hub, has been under siege for weeks as pro-Russian separatists effectively surrounded it, hampering the evacuation of civilians and, more recently, all but trapping about 5,000 pro-Kiev troops inside.
But the cease-fire was not being fully upheld in the area around Debaltseve, where occasional sounds of artillery fire and shelling were audible along the roadway from Artemivsk into the besieged city Sunday afternoon. Ukrainian military officials and pro-Russian separatist leaders have each accused the other side of breaking the cease-fire several times in the area around Debaltseve, where rebel forces had all but surrounded the city by Saturday night — and where, separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko had told Russian news agency Interfax, he would not order his fighters to cease hostilities.
Each side blamed the other for violations of the cease-fire agreement in the area Sunday, in the hours after the deal went into effect at midnight. Although international observers noted that Debaltseve seemed to be one of just a few exceptions to an otherwise functional cease-fire, the continued shelling in the war’s most critical theater struck many on the ground as a sign that the truce might not hold for long.
The caveat prompted Poroshenko to issue a warning along with his cease-fire order, delivered live on Ukrainian television, saying that if the rebels did strike Debaltseve — or any other point along the contact line — troops would respond.
“This cease-fire won’t amount to anything — they’ll have a break and regroup their forces,” said Anatoly Hromovoy, 46, a senior lieutenant and one of the first to escape Debaltseve after the cease-fire, in a convoy of wounded and dead soldiers. “It’s going to be a huge fight. It can get worse. Debaltseve wasn’t yet a massacre.”
“If they hit us in one cheek, we will not turn the other,” Poroshenko said.
On the eve of the cease-fire, rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko had warned in comments to Russian news agency Interfax that the separatists did not consider Debaltseve to be part of the peace agreement and pledged to “block all attempts” by soldiers to break out of the city unless they agreed to surrender.
Each side has put the onus of maintaining the cease-fire fully in the other’s court. Few on the ground believe it will hold.
Ukrainian officials don’t see it that way. They argue that Debaltseve is not exempted from the deal that the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France struck in Minsk, Belarus, last Thursday after all-night negotiations. Ukraine’s National Security and Defense spokesman in Kiev also maintained Sunday that the Ukrainian side still controls the main road leading out of Debaltseve, although soldiers who made a run for Ukraine-controlled territory in the hours after the cease-fire told a slightly different story.
“This cease-fire won’t amount to anything — they’ll have a break, and regroup their forces,” said Anatoly Hromovoy, 46, a senior lieutenant in the army who was one of the first troops to break out of Debaltseve in the hours after the cease-fire in a small convoy carrying dead soldiers and the wounded. He had to wait two days after being injured for the opportunity to get out. “It’s going to be a huge fight. It can get worse; Debaltseve wasn’t yet a massacre.”
“The road wasn’t blocked, but it was constantly under heavy fire,” said Artyom Maximov, 31, who was brought out early Sunday on a medical convoy. “They shot at us, but we weren’t hit. They missed us in the fog.”
“I was in Ilovaysk,” Hromovoy added, referring to the final critical siege of the eastern Ukrainian conflict from this summer, when troops were surrounded in the town outside the coastal town of Mariupol, before the two sides signed a first cease-fire agreement, also in Minsk. “But this is a completely different war.”
Northwest of the city, the roads were mostly empty, except for the Ukrainian soldiers at checkpoints or those walking freely between military vehicles lined up in stretches along the roadside. Occasionally, heavy military vehicles — including an armored personnel carrier and a multiple-rocket launcher — sped by from the direction of Artemivsk, a city that has served as a triage point for wounded soldiers and escaping civilians, going in the direction of Debaltseve. Their destination was not clear.
Hromovoy said that the soldiers in Debaltseve “felt trapped” for several days and that the city was pummeled until about 11:45 p.m. Saturday, at which point the shelling fell away. But about 2 a.m., when the trucks carrying the dead soldiers and the wounded tried to get to the hospital in Artemivsk 30 miles away, they were shot at, he said. The shots missed only because the vehicles were in a heavy fog, Hromovoy and his fellow wounded soldier Aryom Maximov surmised.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and pro-Russian rebel leaders ordered their fighters to hold fire just after midnight Sunday, bringing a tenuous pause to fighting that had been rapidly escalating in recent days, with violence ratcheting up particularly strongly since the two sides agreed Thursday to the midnight deadline.
“Just the killed and wounded got out,” Maximov, 31, said, adding that only seven living soldiers were in his convoy — but he didn’t know whether others had escaped.
Poroshenko also warned that Ukraine would respond to any purported violations. In the days leading up to the cease-fire, he reserved the right to impose martial law “across Ukraine” if the deal were broken. He noted that he was in touch with President Obama about how to coordinate a response to any escalations, according to his spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko’s Twitter account.
Both rebels and Ukrainian troops estimate that 5,000 pro-Kiev soldiers became trapped in the city as separatist forces all but surrounded it, not physically blocking the main road into and out of Ukrainian-controlled territory, soldiers said, but effectively controlling it from their shelling positions on either side.
Over the weekend, the Obama administration released satellite images that it said showed the Russian army had joined the pro-Russian separatists in their efforts to encircle Debaltseve and take the city, supplying artillery systems and multiple-rocket launchers to the area. It was impossible to independently verify the grainy black-and-white satellite images posted to Twitter by the U.S. ambassador, Geoffrey Pyatt.
On Saturday, the Obama administration released satellite images that it said showed that the Russian army had joined the rebels in a full-scale assault to surround troops in the area around the city. Russia has denied that it is a party to the conflict, and it was impossible to verify the three grainy black-and-white satellite images posted to Twitter by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt.
Poroshenko also noted Saturday that Russia had taken a particular interest in Debaltseve during the Minsk negotiations last week.
According to the United States, the images, commissioned from the private Digital Globe satellite company, showed artillery systems and multiple-rocket launchers Thursday in the area near Debaltseve.
Russia has denied that it is a party to the conflict, and its foreign ministry suggested that Ukraine and the United States had “distorted” the meaning of the agreement.
“We are confident these are Russian military, not separatist, systems,” Pyatt tweeted.
Under the terms of the truce, Ukraine and pro-Russian rebels agreed to pull their heavy weaponry back 30 to 85 miles from the front lines. Ukraine also committed to end an economic blockade of rebel-held territories and give them greater powers of self-rule. The parties also committed to remove foreign fighters from Ukrainian territory, and give Ukraine full control of its borders by the end of 2015.
In comments leading up to his cease-fire order, Poroshenko also noted that Russia had shown a particular interest in the Debaltseve area during the marathon cease-fire negotiations in Minsk. Ukrainian and U.S. officials have asserted that separatists used the 2.5-day window to try to seize the city.
Rebel leader Zakharchenko said that if separatists are not satisfied with how Kiev upholds the bargain, they will seize more territory in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday that Ukraine and the United States have “begun to distort the content of the Minsk agreements.”
The 10-month-old conflict has cost at least 5,400 lives, according to U.N. estimates, and displaced more than a million people.
Early Saturday night, the steady, rumbling sound of shelling in Debaltseve could still be heard in the center of Artemivsk, a city that has served as a triage point for wounded soldiers and escaping civilians as fighting in Debaltseve has worsened. A few hours earlier, Artemivsk had come under shelling for the second time in as many days — though no one was killed.
Alexander Pustovit, and Michael Birnbaum in Moscow, contributed to this report.
In the final two hours before the cease-fire deadline, fog rolled in and the city went quiet, save for a few couples marking Valentine’s Day in a relatively empty Japanese restaurant and pensive men in military fatigues, many carrying assault rifles, pacing the halls of hotels and the hospital, or attempting to calm themselves with a beer in the city’s one open pizza joint.
“No one gets in, and no one gets out,” said Bogdan, a sergeant who commands a 60-member unit in Chornukhyne, a suburb of Debaltseve, in the lobby of the Hotel Ukraina. He came to Artemivsk from the front about a week ago because of minor injuries, he said, but now, unable to return because of the rebel movements, he has been calling his men every two hours to check how badly they are surrounded.
When asked about his hopes for the cease-fire, Bogdan snorted.
“I don’t believe in it,” he said. “I don’t believe in Santa Claus, either.”
Few soldiers believe the cease-fire will hold, and some are ready to dole out blame all around.
“Russia takes what it wants, even though we have the capability to fight back,” said Igor, 24, a former infantryman who is now a minesweeper. He dropped his rifle on the floor with a clang and pushed a beer aside to brandish a set of armor-piercing bullets his unit recently found on former rebel territory — ammunition he said could have come only from Russia.
“It is so much worse than what they show on television,” said Vitaly, 28, his colleague, complaining that most of the information about the conflict is “Ukrainian propaganda or Russian propaganda” — and that all of it plays down the seriousness of the situation at the front.
“If they say seven or eight are dead, it’s really 70 or 80,” Vitaly said. “They’re sending people into the field with no protection and no place to hide.”
Earlier Saturday, a Ukrainian military spokesman said seven soldiers had been killed and 23 wounded in the previous 24 hours.
The 10-month-old conflict has cost at least 5,300 lives, according to U.N. estimates, and displaced more than a million people.
Rebels control only a portion of the Donetsk region. But they warned Saturday that if they are not satisfied that Kiev is upholding its commitments under the Minsk agreement to give them strong powers of autonomy, they will try to conquer more territory.
“If our demands about de facto independence are not fulfilled, we will declare that the whole territory of Donetsk region is ours,” rebel leader Zakharchenko said, according to Russian news agencies. “It doesn’t matter by what means it is seized. If it doesn’t work by political means, we have shown that it is possible in another way.”
In the peace deal, Ukraine and the rebels committed to pull heavy weaponry 30 to 85 miles from the front lines. Ukraine also said it would end an economic blockade of rebel-held territories and offer the areas broad powers of self-rule. A commitment was made to pull foreign fighters from Ukrainian territory, and Ukraine is to receive full control of its border by the end of the year.
Poroshenko said that he spoke to President Obama on Saturday and that they agreed on “further coordination of efforts in case of escalation,” Poroshenko spokesman Syvatoslav Tsegolko wrote on Twitter.
If the cease-fire is broken, Poroshenko said, martial law would be imposed “across Ukraine.”
