Ukraine's Forces Advance on Separatists in Effort to Reclaim East

What's This?

Local residents, one with a message for the Russian president, help to restore a checkpoint in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Saturday.

Image: Max Vetrov/Associated Press

By Christopher Miller2014-05-03 22:57:55 UTC

KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Flames, smoke and acrid fumes filled the air here just after noon on Saturday, blackening the faces of a local man and his pro-Russia separatist pals. They coughed as they worked to rebuild a checkpoint destroyed an hour earlier by Ukrainian forces carrying out the latest stage of an operation against the pro-Russia militants in the eastern part of the country.

“The fascists … they stormed us and fired automatic weapons at us,” an angered Misha said, wiping the soot and sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He did not give his full name, fearing the government and nationalist groups targeting him.

Those he calls “fascists” are the Ukrainian armed forces, who under instructions from Kiev stormed the checkpoint he has manned for more than a week and opened fire on four large trucks, two of which held flammable gas and were peeled back like sardine cans after bullets penetrated their sides, causing them to explode.

“The active phase of the operation continued at dawn,” the Ukrainian acting interior minister, Arsen Avakov, wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday morning. “We are not stopping.”

The Ukrainian operation, meant to purge the pro-Russia separatists from buildings they captured in the east last month, got off to a rough start two weeks ago, when militants seized weapons and several armored personnel vehicles. The separatists are pushing for a referendum on seceding from Ukraine on May 11.

But on Saturday, Ukrainian forces were able to tighten their grip on Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the latest flashpoints here, effectively forcing the separatists into the city center after bombarding them with gunfire.

After dawn, a column of Ukrainian armored personnel vehicles trundled into Kramatorsk, a city of 100,000, and moved past tree-lined streets to recapture the city’s TV tower and security services office while bolstering the military’s position near the airfield.

“Now the [security services] building is under control of the National Guard of Ukraine,” reads a statement on the Interior Ministry website.

Mashable was able to independently confirm the report, visiting the building and speaking to a Ukrainian soldier who declined to identify himself but confirmed that his unit controlled the building.

Reports of casualties were hazy, but Russian state media reported as many as 10 dead and 15 injured. Those numbers could not be confirmed; Mashable's reporter did not see any deceased pro-Russia fighters while on the ground in the embattled city.

Some residents said that wounded rebels had been taken to a nearby hospital. But Mashable was turned away by a man identifying himself as a doctor after he was asked about possible casualties as a result of the Ukrainian operation.

On Friday, neighboring Sloviansk was the target of a military operation in which Ukraine said two of its soldiers were killed after their helicopters were shot down with surface-to-air missiles.

Military observers released

As the counterterrorism operation was underway in Kramatorsk on Saturday, pro-Russia militants in Sloviansk released seven military observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and their five Ukrainian assistants, who had been held captive for more than a week in the city’s security services building. They were reportedly driven from Sloviansk to Donetsk by Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, and Vladimir Lukin, a special representative of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who flew to Ukraine to facilitate their release.

The pro-Kremlin rebels captured the OSCE observers on April 25 in Sloviansk after they said the group was in possession of suspicious material and alleged they were NATO spies.

Recriminations after Odessa fire

A day after dozens of pro-Russia demonstrators died in a fire in a government building in Odessa, both sides used the episode to blame the other for the spread of violence to the southern port city. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the leaders in Kiev "are up to their elbows in blood," while the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said the separatists had started the fighting, the Associated Press reported. Odessa's police chief issued a statement on Saturday calling for calm, but Avakov, the acting interior minister, fired him hours later, the AP said.