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Ukrainian troops begin leaving embattled transport hub Ukrainian troops begin leaving embattled transport hub
(about 3 hours later)
ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — Hundreds of Ukrainian government forces began a chaotic retreat from a surrounded town in the east of the country Wednesday, a major defeat with uncertain consequences for the future of the grinding 10-month-old conflict. ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — Hundreds of exhausted Ukrainian forces staged a chaotic retreat Wednesday from a strategic town besieged by pro-Russian rebels, marking a major defeat for the government and bringing uncertain consequences to efforts at ending the 10-month-old conflict.
An internationally-brokered cease-fire that started Sunday quieted fighting elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, but sparked further battles in and near the key railway hub of Debaltseve. The scenes from the railway hub Debaltseve — with Ukrainian soldiers facing fire even as they withdrew over frozen fields — were a stunning reminder of the region’s instability less than a week after the announcement of another cease-fire bid.
Thousands of Ukrainian troops had been tenuously hanging on in the town for months, but their supply lines have been largely cut after pro-Russian rebels nearly encircled them. The deal had quieted fighting elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, but sparked battles for control of Debaltseve as a prize for both sides.
Hundreds of Ukrainian troops flooded the city of Artemivsk, 25 miles northwest of Debaltseve, Wednesday with more than one hundred wounded soldiers arriving at the city’s trauma hospital. Many soldiers described a dangerous retreat that began over frozen fields overnight Wednesday, in which they came under nearly constant fire. Separatists aligned with Moscow see Debaltseve as an important transport link between its self-declared breakaway regions. Ukraine’s Western-backed government sought to hold Debaltseve as a key military foothold.
The withdrawal was sure to be a heavy political blow to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has staked his office on reuniting Ukraine and stabilizing the conflict. Thousands of Ukrainian troops had been hanging on in the town for months, but their supply lines had been largely cut after pro-Russian rebels nearly encircled them.
“This morning the Armed Forces of Ukraine, together with the National Guard, began an operation for the planned and orderly withdrawal of troops from Debaltseve,” Poroshenko said at Kiev airport Wednesday, before flying to eastern Ukraine, the Interfax news service reported. He said that 80 percent of the troops there had already pulled out, and that they expected two more columns. The withdrawal was a heavy political blow to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has staked his office on reuniting Ukraine and quelling Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
An estimated 5,000 Ukrainian troops have been trapped inside the town for a week — a significant portion of his nation’s battle-ready troops. Debaltseve’s fate was the biggest stumbling block in marathon 15-hour cease-fire negotiations last week. At least one militia leader-turned-politician called for the head of Ukraine’s military to be charged criminally for the defeat.
The cease-fire deal left the town’s fate unresolved, with both sides claiming it for themselves. The White House and European leaders have expressed grave concern about the fighting, which intensified after last Thursday’s agreement, saying it threatened the broader cease-fire agreement. “This morning the Armed Forces of Ukraine, together with the National Guard, began an operation for the planned and orderly withdrawal of troops from Debaltseve,” Poroshenko said at the Kiev airport before flying to the front lines, where he planned to convene his top security advisers.
Ukrainian leaders have pointed to the battle as a reason why the West should still send weaponry to its army, despite the peace deal. Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Ukraine should simply accept that it had been defeated there. He said that 80 percent of the troops there had already pulled out.
The continued bloodshed raises the stakes about the international response to the crisis. The White House has said it will decide whether to ship weapons to Ukraine partially on the outcome of the cease-fire deal.
The European Union, meanwhile, has threatened more sanctions against Russia — a possibility raised again Wednesday by a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The West has accused Russia of sending troops and weapons to aid the rebels, which oppose the Western-looking policies of Ukraine’s leadership. Russia has strongly denied the claims.
“This is a massive violation of the truce that has been in effect since Sunday,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in Berlin.
Underlining the stakes, Merkel, Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande planned to speak by telephone later Wednesday.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said that there was no immediate information about the number of dead and wounded in Debaltseve.
A rebel spokesman claimed that they had killed thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, the Interfax news agency reported. Separatist also have reported taking hundreds of soldiers captive, but claimed on both sides are often wildly exaggerated.
An estimated 5,000 Ukrainian troops have been trapped inside the town for a week — a significant portion of Ukraine’s battle-ready soldiers.
Debaltseve’s fate was the biggest stumbling block in marathon cease-fire negotiations last week. The accord left the town’s fate unresolved, with both sides claiming it for themselves.
Ukrainian leaders have pointed to the battle as a reason why the West should still send weaponry despite the peace deal. Putin said Tuesday that Ukraine should simply accept that it had been defeated there.
Officials who were briefed on the cease-fire negotiations said that a major sticking point had been whether Ukrainian soldiers could retreat from Debaltseve while keeping their weapons and equipment.Officials who were briefed on the cease-fire negotiations said that a major sticking point had been whether Ukrainian soldiers could retreat from Debaltseve while keeping their weapons and equipment.
The army has suffered punishing shortages in basic supplies, such as blankets and ammunition. On Wednesday, many of the retreating soldiers retained their own rifles, and many were perched on tanks and armored personnel carriers. But there was no clarity about how many were left inside the town, nor how many people had been killed. The army has suffered punishing shortages in basic supplies, such as blankets and ammunition.
Debaltseve has deep strategic significance, both for the rebels and for the Ukrainians. A key railway crossroads, it connects eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland to Russia. Under rebel control, it can strengthen the economic position of break-away territories. On Wednesday, many of the retreating soldiers retained their own rifles, and many were perched on tanks and armored personnel carriers toward Artemivsk, about 25 miles northwest of Debaltseve.
The apparent defeat was also a powerful signal that rebels – backed by Russian troops and weaponry, according to Kiev and its Western allies – still have the strength to menace Ukrainian-held territory. Poroshenko said that they had been able to retreat with their equipment. A military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, later said that they had destroyed any equipment they could bring along.
Buses, armored personnel carriers, at least one tank and dozens of other improvised ambulances brought in wounded soldiers to the hospital, where blood-soaked stretchers were piled outside the main entrance. Several soldiers described receiving an order to retreat late Tuesday, although there was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian authorities. Debaltseve has deep strategic significance, both for the rebels and for the Ukrainians. A key railway crossroads, it connects eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland to Russia. Under rebel control, it can strengthen the economic position of breakaway territories.
“They shot at us the whole time,” said one soldier, who gave only his nickname, Maryak, which means sailor. The apparent defeat was also a powerful signal that rebels still have the strength to menace Ukrainian-held territory.
Buses, armored personnel carriers, at least one tank and dozens of other improvised ambulances brought in wounded soldiers to the hospital in Amtemivsk, where blood-soaked stretchers were piled outside the main entrance.
“We should have done it earlier,” said a low-level Ukrainian officer, Vladimir Makarenko, 39, who was sitting Wednesday in a green military radio communications truck and said he had arrived in Debaltseve in late December. “The base camp was fine, but at the front line there was never enough.”
If the rebels push farther than Debaltseve, he said, “it will be World War III.”
During the retreat, “they shot at us the whole time,” said one soldier, who gave only his nickname, Maryak, which means sailor.
An officer, who refused to give his name because some of his men were still trapped in Debaltseve, said “a lot of people managed to escape.”An officer, who refused to give his name because some of his men were still trapped in Debaltseve, said “a lot of people managed to escape.”
“But on a scale of one to 10, this has been 100” in terms of fighting in the encircled town over the last few days. “But on a scale of one to 10, this has been 100” in terms of fighting in the encircled town over the last few days, he said.
The Ukrainian military admitted Tuesday that it no longer had full control over the transport hub, as rebel leaders claimed to have seized broad swaths of ground in street-by-street combat, including the train station. In a sign of the political cauldron that awaits Poroshenko following the pullout, one of his coalition allies in parliament called for criminal charges to be lodged against Ukraine’s military leadership.
The apparent gains in Debaltseve by pro-Russian separatists came as they and Ukrainian forces picked up the pace of their artillery battles, trading fire in areas around the city despite a three-day-old cease-fire under which the two sides were to remove their heavy weapons from the front lines starting Tuesday. “There were enough forces and equipment. The problem is coordination and command,” Semen Semenchenko, who is also a volunteer militia commander, wrote on Facebook. “The head of the General Staff should be brought to liability. Period.”
During the day, the Ukrainian military was seen and heard firing projectiles from multiple rocket launchers along a highway leading to Debaltseve, while evidence of shelling from rebel positions also was apparent, especially near a power plant outside Svitlodarsk, where one shell hit a gas pipe, causing a fiery explosion. The pullout followed days of intense battles as rebels tightened their grip around the town. At some points, the fighting spilled into the streets, shifting block by block.
The worsening situation posed a critical challenge to the continued viability of the cease-fire, which never really took effect around Debaltseve, although it was observed at other points along the front lines since going into effect Sunday. And before the fighting in and around Debaltseve potentially unravels the fragile peace elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, the government faces the question of what to do about the 5,000 troops all but trapped in the contested city.
Over the past several days, separatist forces have effectively encircled Debaltseve, blocking it on all sides except along the highway leading to pro-Ukrainian territory. But soldiers who escaped described that road as all but impassable, because the rebels occupy positions on either side.
Although Ukraine has gone through a series of large-scale mobilizations since it began fighting the separatists in the east, the 5,000 soldiers in Debaltseve are a significant part of the army’s ready fighting force. A year ago, before the war commenced, that number would have been almost the entire combat-ready force of the country, according to estimates the defense minister provided to parliament at the time.
Pro-Russian rebel leaders have offered the troops a way out only through surrender. On Tuesday, they claimed that at least dozens of pro-Kiev soldiers were voluntarily giving up their positions and weapons.
“The Debaltseve boiling pot is closed,” Luhansk rebel leader Igor Plotnitsky said. “It is Ukraine who cannot, and does not want to, recognize this.”“The Debaltseve boiling pot is closed,” Luhansk rebel leader Igor Plotnitsky said. “It is Ukraine who cannot, and does not want to, recognize this.”
But Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, denied that any Ukrainian soldiers had surrendered. He also accused the separatists of capturing a group of Ukrainian soldiers trying to deliver supplies to encircled troops when they ran out of ammunition — but he did not say how many had been taken prisoner. Russia has routinely denied direct involvement in the conflict.
Trapped soldiers and some of those who managed to break out described the situation in Debaltseve as hellish. Amid the protracted crisis, leaders of some of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions have pleaded with Kiev to adopt a new strategy. On Tuesday, Putin pointed a finger in the opposite direction. Asked during a visit to Hungary how Russia would respond to a U.S. shipment of lethal arms to Ukraine, Putin said that “these weapons are available now.” He also said that no matter what weapons were introduced into the conflict, “the number of victims can certainly increase.”
Semenchenko, the head of the pro-Kiev Donbas battalion, many of whose fighters are in Debaltseve, called on military and political leaders to take “decisive actions” to free the soldiers, adding that any delays could be “very costly” and that simply trying to hold their position “could lead to disaster.”
Semenchenko suggested that it might be time to give up trying to hold Debaltseve.
“It is necessary to save the core of the army,” he said. “Territory we can always get back.”
The situation in Debaltseve has led Ukrainians to draw likenesses between the soldiers’ predicament there and the summer siege of Ilovaysk, during which the Donbas battalion claimed 1,000 soldiers had died.
“We have had Ilovaysk. Now we have Debaltseve,” Aleksander Chelobitchenko, a senior lieutenant on the Ukrainian side of the Joint Control Commission, a combined Ukrainian-Russian observation team based in Soledar, said Tuesday. “If you keep cutting the branches off a tree, eventually the tree will die. This is very bad, to lose all this.”
But the stakes in Debaltseve go beyond the number of soldiers trapped there, Chelobitchenko said.
“It’s not just the people. It’s also the equipment and the weapons there,” he said. “If one side takes over the equipment, they can turn it against the other side.”
The weapons and other equipment that could change hands if Ukrainian troops surrender or lose would be a significant gain for rebel forces, even if Ukrainian leaders are still regularly pleading with their Western allies, especially the United States, to supplement their combat efforts with lethal military aid. They need it, Ukrainian leaders insist, to face the separatists, who Kiev and its allies believe are being directly bolstered with Russian troops and weapons.
Russia has routinely denied direct involvement in the conflict. On Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed a finger in the opposite direction. Asked during a visit to Hungary how Russia would respond to a U.S. shipment of lethal arms to Ukraine, Putin said that “these weapons are available now.” He also said that no matter what weapons were introduced into the conflict, “the number of victims can certainly increase.”
The Obama administration has said that no decision has been made to send lethal aid to Ukraine. A spokesman for the National Security Council said in Washington on Tuesday that the policy on not sending such aid was still intact and that the administration had “no idea what Putin is referring to.”The Obama administration has said that no decision has been made to send lethal aid to Ukraine. A spokesman for the National Security Council said in Washington on Tuesday that the policy on not sending such aid was still intact and that the administration had “no idea what Putin is referring to.”
Deane contributed from London. Karen DeYoung and Brian Murphy in Washington also contributed to this report. Birnbaum reported from Moscow. Daniella Deane in London, and Karen DeYoung and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.