Fighting escalates in eastern Ukraine
January 19, 2015, 7:40 am

Pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk say they will make their stand in the city [Xinhua]

The Ukraine military said on Sunday that it seized control of Donetsk airport.

“The decision was taken for a mass operation … We succeeded in almost completely cleaning the territory of the airport,” Ukraine’s national defence council speaker Andriy Lysenko told the media as fighting continued into Monday.

But pro-Russian separatists denied that they had lost control of the airport and instead said they had repelled four major Ukrainian military attacks.

Ukraine officials say the airport is a government facility and therefore does not fall within the parameters of a ceasefire agreed in September.

The ceasefire came about during negotiations between the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine – Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and Ukraine – and the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR and LPR) in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.

Ukraine rejects Putin’s plan

But officials in Moscow reacted angrily to the latest surge in fighting and blamed Kiev for rejecting a plan proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On Friday, Moscow suggested that Ukraine and separatist forces withdraw their heavy artillery – anything over 10mm.

On the same day, five civilians were killed due to intense shelling of military and civilian areas in eastern Ukraine.

Days earlier, 13 civilians were killed and 11 wounded when a civilian bus was struck by shelling while at a checkpoint in Volnovakha near Donetsk. The Ukrainian military and the separatists blamed one another for the shelling.

“In recent days, Russia has consistently made efforts to mediate the conflict. In particular, on Thursday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a written message to Ukrainian President Poroshenko, in which both sides of the conflict were offered a concrete plan for removal of heavy artillery,” Russian presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the media on Sunday.

“The letter was received by President of Ukraine on Friday morning,” he said, adding that that Putin’s plan had been rejected with now counter-proposals being made, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

A Ukraine Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson tweeted early on Monday that Kiev has “offered Russia immediate ceasefire”. The statement went on to say that Ukraine is committed to a ceasefire.

The UN late on Sunday warned that the Minsk ceasefire agreements could fall apart if Russia and Ukraine don’t move quickly to de-escalate.

“[The Secretary-General] implores all sides to make good on their commitments under the Minsk Protocol and Memorandum, with the first step being an immediate and full cessation of hostilities,” a UN statement said.

The UN says that in the past 10 months more than 4,700 civilians have been killed and more than 10,000 wounded since pro-Russian rebels vowed to separate from Ukraine and create an independent state in the east.

There are more than a million displaced peoples from this conflict, human rights groups say.

Source: Agencies