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Major defeat as Ukrainian troops retreat from rail hub Major defeat as Ukrainian troops retreat from rail hub
(35 minutes later)
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. ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — Ukrainian troops suffered a major battlefield defeat on Wednesday, bringing pro-Russian rebels one step closer to solidifying their hold over a swath of the eastern part of the country. The chaotic Ukrainian pullback — made under heavy shelling — threatened the viability of a peace deal reached last week and raised fears of fresh escalation.
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. Russian state television broadcast images of rebels raising their flag over the seized railway hub of Debaltseve, where fighting only intensified after a cease-fire ostensibly took effect Sunday. Nearly a year after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, the fresh loss threatened tough political consequences for Ukraine’s pro-Western president amid questions of how thousands of troops became surrounded in recent weeks.
The deal had quieted fighting elsewhere in eastern Ukraine, but sparked battles for control of Debaltseve as a prize for both sides. The violence may increase pressure on President Obama to supply Ukraine’s military with weapons, a decision he said would be made only after the effort at peace. European Union leaders, meanwhile, said they would consider more economic sanctions against Russia.
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. Elsewhere in Ukraine’s war-torn east, violence was abating as rebels announced that they had begun pulling back heavy weaponry in accordance with the cease-fire agreement. But the advance on Debaltseve suggested that the Russian-backed rebels had the strength to push forward when they wished. Ukrainian troops described taking fire from two sides as they made a chaotic escape over the frozen steppe.
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. President Petro Poroshenko announced the retreat in a nationally televised address on Wednesday before he flew to the front lines to meet with soldiers. He has staked his office on reuniting Ukraine and quelling Europe’s bloodiest conflict since the Balkan wars in the 1990s.
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. “This morning the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard completed an operation on the planned and organized withdrawal of certain units from Debaltseve,” Poroshenko said. The withdrawal “is a convincing proof of the combat capability of our armed forces and efficiency of our military commanders.”
At least one militia leader-turned-politician called for the head of Ukraine’s military to be charged criminally for the defeat. But the defeat was sure to stir a political cauldron over the prosecution of the war in Kiev, where charges of incompetence and even betrayal were lobbed at Ukraine’s military brass in the aftermath. The estimated 5,000 Ukrainian troops who were in and around Debaltseve represented a significant portion of the nation’s battle-ready soldiers.
“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. Ukraine’s flatlining economy is fueling even more anger toward Ukraine’s leaders. Natural gas prices are set to nearly triple under the terms of a bailout plan from the International Monetary Fund, sure to be politically radioactive. Ukraine’s currency fell to record lows on Wednesday.
He said that 80 percent of the troops there had already pulled out. One of Poroshenko’s coalition allies in parliament called for criminal charges to be lodged against top military leaders.
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. “There were enough forces and equipment. The problem is coordination and command,” Semen Semenchenko, a lawmaker who is also a volunteer militia commander, wrote on Facebook. “The head of the General Staff should be brought to liability. Period.”
The European Union, meanwhile, has threatened more sanctions against Russia — a possibility raised again Wednesday by a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Western officials said Wednesday that the fighting called into question the viability of the peace deal, reached in Minsk, Belarus, last week between Russian President Vladimir Putin and European leaders.
The West has accused Russia of sending troops and weapons to aid the rebels, who oppose the Western-oriented policies of Ukraine’s leadership. Russia has strongly denied the claims. The situation in Debaltseve “is a massive violation of the cease-fire,” a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffen Seibert, said in Berlin. “It is a heavy strain on . . . the hope for peace in eastern Ukraine in general.” He said Germany was poised to push for further sanctions against Russia if fighting escalates.
“This is a massive violation of the truce that has been in effect since Sunday,” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said in Berlin. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also said he was “deeply concerned” about the fighting. He was meeting E.U. defense ministers in the Latvian capital, Riga, to discuss NATO efforts to bolster European defenses against a military threat from Russia.
Underlining the stakes, Merkel, Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande planned to speak by telephone later Wednesday. Russia’s top diplomat said the fighting was inevitable after Poroshenko’s insistence at last week’s peace negotiations that the troops were not surrounded.
A pillar of the cease-fire is the mutual withdrawal of heavy weapons from at least 30 miles of the current front-lines over the next two weeks. Despite the battles in Debaltseve, the rollback was underway in at least one area, said the rebel spokesman Eduard Basurin. “We insist on implementing agreements in southeastern Ukraine including stopping the fight in Debaltseve,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow.
He told Russian Rossiya 1 channel that rebels were pulling back some guns from Olenivka, an area south of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk. Last week’s peace deal left a 60-hour window before the cease-fire was set to go into effect. That stipulation almost certainly led to an increase in fighting, as both sides sought to maximize their positions before the truce. No official explanation was given for the delay, although Ukrainian and European officials said at the time they were ready to have an immediate cease-fire. The window for continued fighting has led to speculation that rebels may have been seeking to seize Debaltseve before the truce took effect.
“This is the first step,” Basurin said. “We’re not waiting for Ukraine to start pulling back the weaponry together with us.” Six Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the pullout, according to the Ukrainian military, although the real number seemed likely to be significantly higher, based on Ukrainian soldiers’ accounts of sustaining heavy fire during the late-night retreat. Many said they had only 10 minutes’ notice to grab what they could carry and flee, piling onto tanks, armored personnel carriers and trucks as they sped toward the staging city of Artemivsk.
A Ukrainian military spokesman said that there was no immediate information about the number of dead and wounded in Debaltseve. It was not immediately clear how many troops escaped and how many remained in and around the town. Top military officials said that 85 percent of the troops had escaped as of Wednesday evening. Others may still be in hiding or were killed or captured, they said. Some soldiers said that many corpses were left behind.
But a rebel spokesman claimed that the pro-Moscow forces had killed thousands of Ukrainian soldiers, the Interfax news agency reported. Separatists also have reported taking hundreds of soldiers captive, but claims on both sides are often wildly exaggerated. Front-line troops questioned on Wednesday why it took so long for the retreat to be ordered, saying that their situation had long ago become hopeless.
An estimated 5,000 Ukrainian troops have been trapped inside the town for a week — a significant portion of Ukraine’s battle-ready soldiers. “It’s not about Debaltseve as a city; it’s about Putin showing he can do what he wants,” said Lt. Viktor Kovalenko, the acting deputy commander of the battalion that had been charged with protecting railroads into Debaltseve. He said several people in his convoy were killed during the retreat, which began at 3 a.m. Wednesday, and that at least 50 troops were captured as they tried to flee.
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. Kovalenko said supplies had run so low that one Ukrainian position was captured earlier this week simply because it ran out of ammunition.
Ukrainian leaders have pointed to the battle as a reason that the West should still send weaponry despite the peace deal. Putin said Tuesday that Ukraine should simply accept that it had been defeated there. Another soldier described a harrowing early morning escape, speeding over pitch-black fields that had been hardened by frost.
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. “We came under shelling, and we prayed to God to let us get out. There are a lot of wounded and killed people,” said Ihor Sevastyan, 47, who drove out of Debaltseve Wednesday in a green radio truck. The vehicle was riddled with large bullet holes, and one of the tires had been shot out. They kept pushing forward using the truck’s rim.
The army has suffered punishing shortages in basic supplies, such as blankets and ammunition. Other than in Debaltseve, both sides said Wednesday that they were holding to the agreement. Rebels said they had begun to pull back heavy weaponry from the front lines, as stipulated by the cease-fire deal, and relatively little fighting was reported elsewhere in the region.
On Wednesday, many of the retreating soldiers retained their own rifles, and many were perched on tanks and armored personnel carriers heading toward Artemivsk, about 25 miles northwest of Debaltseve. “Peace is close at hand now, and we want it to come,” a rebel leader, Eduard Basurin, said, according to the rebels’ official mouthpiece.
Poroshenko said the troops were able to retreat with their equipment. A military spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko, later said they had destroyed any equipment they could not bring with them. Birnbaum reported from Moscow. Natasha Abbakumova in Moscow, Alexander Pustovit in Artemivsk, Ukraine, Stephanie Kirchner in Berlin, Daniela Deane in London and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.
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.
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 Artemivsk, 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 that “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, he said.
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.
“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.”
Birnbaum reported from Moscow. Daniela Deane in London and Karen DeYoung and Brian Murphy in Washington contributed to this report.