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Tag: pro russian militants
Russia Waging Massive War Games As Ukraine Recovers More Territory

Russia Waging Massive War Games As Ukraine Recovers More Territory

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Russia launched massive air force exercises in territory along its border with Ukraine on Monday that will include air-to-ground firing practices and missile tests, the Defense Ministry announced in Moscow.

The war games, coinciding with another buildup of Russian troops on the border with eastern Ukraine regions seized by pro-Russia separatists, have heightened tensions and renewed fears that the Kremlin may be poising its forces for an invasion.

Ukrainian troops recaptured a key railway junction near Donetsk on Monday, another gain against the heavily armed separatists who in recent weeks have lost much of the area seized after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in March.

Ukraine and its Western allies say the militants are armed and instigated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian leaders deny they are involved in the eastern Ukraine fighting that has taken more than 1,100 lives since spring, but many of the separatist leaders are Russian citizens who openly say they are fighting to wrest the region from Kiev’s rule.

In announcing the air defense exercises, Col. Igor Klimov was quoted by Russia’s official Itar-Tass news agency as saying the five-day operation would involve drills with the Kremlin’s newest and most sophisticated aircraft.

“In all, the maneuvers will involve 100 planes and helicopters such as Su-27 Flanker fighter jets, MiG-31 Foxhound fighter jets, multipurpose Su-34 Fullback fighter-bombers, Su-24 Fencer bombers, as well as Mi-8, Mi-24 and Mi-28N combat helicopters,” Klimov told Itar-Tass.

“The combat aircraft will be practicing shooting at targets on land and in the air at new firing ranges as well as conducting launches of anti-aircraft missiles at the Ashuluk firing range in the southern Astrakhan region,” the news agency said.

Klimov named the towns of Armavir, Krymsk, Mozdok, and Morozovsk as venues of the air operations _ all located in Russian regions that border the southeastern Ukrainian areas where separatists are fighting off Ukrainian troops.

Russia had amassed more than 40,000 troops along Ukraine’s border in March and April, when the allied gunmen seized much of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in an operation likely inspired by Russia’s swift takeover and annexation of Crimea, home of the Russian Black Sea naval fleet.

But U.S. and European Union sanctions imposed on Russia for the Crimean seizure have inflicted significant damage on Russia’s economy, and the threat of more punitive measures targeted on the vital energy and banking industries appears to have tempered Putin’s alleged designs on the eastern Ukraine territory that would provide a land bridge to Crimea.

Russia withdrew much of its troop buildup on the border in May, when hundreds of international monitors were in the region for Ukraine’s presidential election. But NATO military commander Gen. Philip Breedlove said last week that satellite intelligence suggests 12,000 troops and new convoys of heavy weapons are again arrayed along the border.

Western intelligence has also identified the source of a surface-to-air missile that brought down a Malaysia Airlines passenger flight on July 17 as a Russian-made BUK anti-aircraft launcher likely supplied to the separatists by Moscow. The Boeing 777 and its 298 passengers and crew crashed into militant-controlled territory and the gunmen’s roadblocks and running battles with government forces hampered an international investigation and recovery mission for two weeks.

Teams of Dutch and Australian forensic specialists have been gathering remains and belongings since finally gaining access to the crash site on Thursday, and a planeload of evidence was flown from government-controlled Kharkiv to a Dutch military facility on Monday to aid in the identification of crash victims, a Dutch leader of the mission told reporters in Kiev.

AFP Photo/Anatolii Stepanov

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Indiana University Student Among Those In Malaysia Airlines Crash

Indiana University Student Among Those In Malaysia Airlines Crash

By Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times

An Indiana University student was among those killed in the Malaysia Airlines jet crash Thursday, university officials announced.

Karlijn Keijzer, 25, was a doctoral student in chemistry at the university and an avid rower who once competed on the women’s varsity rowing team there, the school said. She had also earned her master’s degree at Indiana.

“On behalf of the entire Indiana University community, I want to express my deepest sympathies to Karlijn’s family and friends over her tragic death,” Indiana University President Michael A. McRobbie said in a statement. “Karlijn was an outstanding student and a talented athlete, and her passing is a loss to the campus and the university.”

Keijzer, who was from the Netherlands, was a member of Indiana’s Varsity 8 boat team during its 2011 season, and earned honors from the Collegiate Rowing Coaches Association and Academic All-Big Ten.

“The Indiana Rowing family is deeply saddened by the news of Karlijn’s sudden passing,” said Indiana head rowing coach Steve Peterson. “She came to us for one year as a graduate student and truly wanted to pursue rowing. That year was the first year we really started to make a mark … and she was a huge reason for it.”

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, which U.S. intelligence officials have blamed on an apparent surface-to-air missile fired by pro-Russia militants, killing all 298 passengers and crew on board.

AFP Photo/Manan Vatsyayana

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Malaysia Defends Flight Path Of Downed Jet

Malaysia Defends Flight Path Of Downed Jet

By Steven Zeitchik, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — A day after a Malaysia Airlines plane traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur crashed near the Russian border in eastern Ukraine, the Malaysian transportation minister said he believed the crew bore no responsibility for the deadly flight plan.

“The flight path taken by MH17 was approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization and by the countries whose airspace the route passed through,” said Liow Tiong Lai at a news conference in Kuala Lumpur on Friday. “Fifteen out of 16 airlines in the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines fly this route over Ukraine.”

The crash, which U.S. officials believe was caused by a surface-to-air missile, spread wreckage over a wide area in the contested territory around Donetsk and is presumed to have resulted in the deaths of all 298 people on board. Ukrainian officials have blamed pro-Russia separatists who control large parts of the area; the rebels have denied any involvement.

Both Liow, who took over the minister job from interim predecessor Hishammuddin Hussein just several weeks ago, and Malaysia Airlines have come under fire for the pilots’ decision to fly that route. Critics note that they chose the path despite the recent danger faced by Ukrainian military transport planes at the hands of rebel fighters — and even though a number of European and other airlines had been choosing to circumvent the troubled airspace.

Liow — who said that Malaysia Airlines would send a team of 62 to Kiev to assist with the post-crash efforts — added that there had been “no last-minute instructions” to change the flight plan and called for an independent investigation into the incident.

But determining the circumstances that led to the downing of the plane won’t be simple. While aviation disasters tend to spur high levels of multinational cooperation, that’s far less likely here given the politically charged nature and geography of Thursday’s crash.

The intergovernmental Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which counts both Ukraine and Russia as members, said Thursday on behalf of itself and the two countries that an agreement had been secured from the rebels “to provide safe access and security guarantees” to investigators from Ukraine and other nations as well as to OSCE. A delegation from the group’s special monitoring mission in Kiev set out for Donetsk on Friday morning. Russian President Vladimir Putin also told Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Friday that he wanted a “thorough and unbiased” investigation, the Kremlin said.

But it remains to be seen if that goal is achievable given the various parties’ competing interests, and given the hostile climate between Ukraine and Russia dating back to Putin’s annexation of Crimea this spring. The two nations have also been engaged in a blame game over the crash.

Russia denied any involvement, saying it had not supplied separatists with a Buk missile system, which can propel missiles high into the air at great speed. Sergei Kavtaradze, a member of the Security Council of the Donetsk People’s Republic, also told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday that it “was not us who shot down the plane because we don’t have this hardware.”

But Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said that rebels indeed had the weapon and that it had been provided by Russia. (Russian state TV noted in June that rebels had captured an anti-aircraft system from the Ukrainian army.)

It is also unclear how quickly or easily the rebel forces, led in part by Alexander Borodai and his self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, will allow access to hard-fought territory. On Friday in Kiev, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that “Ukrainian authorities are still not allowed to get to the crash site,” adding that “all lines have been crossed” with the incident.

Adding to the complications, Putin has been critical of OSCE in the past, saying it is a cudgel for Western interests.

The investigation could yield major geopolitical consequences. If it’s proved that Russia had a role in the downing of the plane, Putin could face increased pressure from the United States and the European Union to distance himself from the rebels.

The crash comes in the wake of recent gains by Ukraine’s military, which has won back at least half of the rebel territory in the past three weeks. But the fighting could intensify in the weeks ahead as separatists dig in for what experts believe could be a bloody urban battle.

Elsewhere in the country, the streets remained calm. In beachfront Odessa, far quieter this season because of the lack of Russian tourists, families, and couples strolled in the city’s restaurant district Thursday night, while Friday morning in Kiev, commuters embarked on the morning rush in a scene that offered few hints of the ongoing battle in the east.

Photo: ITAR-TASS/Zuma Press/MCT/Zurab Dzhavakhadze

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Ukrainian Troops, Pro-Russia Rebels Regroup For Fight Over Donetsk

Ukrainian Troops, Pro-Russia Rebels Regroup For Fight Over Donetsk

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Ukraine’s new defense minister said Tuesday that peace talks will occur only after the pro-Russia rebels holed up in the eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk completely disarm.

“There will be no more unilateral cease-fire,” Defense Minister Valery Heletey said in a statement posted on the ministry website, reflecting the emboldened posture of Ukraine’s military since its troops managed to recover a handful of important rebel strongholds in recent days.

While a fierce showdown appeared in the offing, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his troops would refrain from using heavy artillery or airstrikes in Donetsk, a city of 1 million residents where the gunmen fighting to join Russia occupy the 10-story regional government headquarters and other buildings in the city center.

Since government forces succeeded in recent days to drive the militants from Slovyansk, Kramatorsk, and other towns in the Donetsk region that they held for three months, many of the gunmen have fled to central Donetsk to regroup and collaborate with the putative rebel government. Alexander Borodai, one of the self-styled leaders of the proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, told Russian media during a visit to Moscow on Tuesday that the separatists were not taking refuge in Donetsk but, rather, planning a counteroffensive.

“We’re not preparing ourselves for a siege. We are preparing ourselves for action,” Borodai was quoted as saying by the online newspaper Gazeta.ru.

Igor Strelkov, the Russian special forces veteran who commanded the separatist operations in Slovyansk, cast the rebels’ retreat over the weekend as a strategic move to spare the civilian population from further hazard. Dozens of fighters as well as civilians were killed around the city in the heavy artillery exchanges between rebels and government forces.

“The (Ukrainian) National Guard are getting revenge for their numerous losses on the locals,” Strelkov was quoted as saying by Russian website LifeNews and by state-controlled Russia Today television.

Although Strelkov and other Russian mercenaries have made no secret of their involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has steadfastly denied Kiev’s accusations that Russia is supporting the separatist rebellion that has left nearly 500 dead since April.

Poroshenko, who has been in office a month, had proclaimed a unilateral cease-fire on June 20 but ended it last week, saying that rebel forces had violated the truce more than 100 times. At least 47 Ukrainian troops died in attacks during the 10 days that the government claimed to be halting its offensive, although the separatists accused the Kiev forces of also violating the cease-fire.

As rebels retreated from the towns recovered by government forces over the past four days, bridges and other transportation infrastructure have been destroyed on the routes into Donetsk, presumably to frustrate the advance of government troops. On Tuesday, a blast damaged a railroad line near Horlivka, between Slovyansk and Donetsk, the online Ukrainian news site Ostrov reported.

AFP Photo / Anatoliy Stepanov

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