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Russian Armored Invasion Of Ukraine Confirmed By NATO, Separatists

Russian Armored Invasion Of Ukraine Confirmed By NATO, Separatists

By Victoria Butenko and Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

KIEV, Ukraine — Russian tanks and troops fired their way into eastern Ukraine on Thursday and seized a strategic gateway town on the road to the heavily militarized Crimean peninsula that Moscow annexed in March, Ukrainian and NATO officials reported.

NATO released satellite photos of Russia’s recent troop and armor buildup on its border with Ukraine, and images showing columns of tanks and armored vehicles entering Ukraine from Russia’s Rostov region.

The Western military alliance evidence was bolstered by a pro-Russia separatist leader who told Russian state television that at least 3,000 Russian gunmen, many of them retired military or active-duty Kremlin troops on leave, have been fighting alongside the Ukrainian separatists since their uprising began five months ago.

“They are fighting with us, understanding that it is their duty,” said Alexander Zakharchenko, the self-styled leader of the breakaway Donetsk People’s Republic, undermining Russian President Vladimir Putin’s insistence that Russia has no role in the Ukrainian conflict.

Ukrainian security officials reported a major expansion of the armored incursion into Novoazovsk that began Wednesday. The report by Col. Andriy Lysenko of the National Security and Defense Council that two armored columns had crossed into Ukraine after firing rockets over the border prompted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to cancel a trip abroad and summon the government’s security council for an emergency meeting.

“I have made a decision to cancel my working visit to the Republic of Turkey due to sharp aggravation of the situation in Donetsk region,” Poroshenko said. “Today the president’s place is in Kiev.”

A report from the security council said the Russian armored incursion, which has opened up a new front in Kiev’s battle against separatists, was carried out by regular Russian military forces replacing local militants and nationalists who had lost significant territory last month to Ukrainian troops.

Government forces were overwhelmed by the armored columns and ordered to withdraw, the security council statement said, leaving Novoazovsk for the invading Russians to take.

Ukrainian troops were reinforcing their positions on the seaside road leading to Mariupol, a city of nearly 500,000 that is a key shipping terminus and steelmaking venue. The same road leads eventually to the Crimean peninsula, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and about 25,000 troops are based.

The Russian deployments onto the Sea of Azov road have heightened fears that the Kremlin is planning to seize the corridor to provide a land bridge from the Russian mainland to Crimea.

At NATO’s military headquarters in Mons, Belgium, a Dutch general in charge of the alliance crisis management center released satellite images captured over the last two weeks and said they confirmed Russia’s military intrusion.

“Over the past two weeks we have noted a significant escalation in both the level and sophistication of Russia’s military interference in Ukraine,” said Brig. Gen. Nico Tak.

“Russia is reinforcing and resupplying separatist forces in a blatant attempt to change the momentum of the fighting, which is currently favoring the Ukrainian military,” Tak told journalists at a news conference.

He also said NATO estimates that there are at least 1,000 Russian military personnel directly engaged in fighting in Ukraine, and that 20,000 battle-ready troops and hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles are amassed in Russia just across the border.

Tak said the Russian action was aimed at freezing the conflict and confronting Ukraine with a permanent security crisis.

“It’s likely that the situation will end in a stalemate,” he said. “The foothold that has been created will be expanded and secured so that the separatists will not suffer a defeat.”

Special correspondent Butenko reported from Kiev and staff writer Williams from Los Angeles. Special correspondent Isabel Gorst in Moscow also contributed to this report.

AFP Photo/Francisco Leong

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Ukraine President: Russian Forces Have Invaded

Ukraine President: Russian Forces Have Invaded

By Isabel Gorst, Los Angeles Times

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called a snap meeting of his security council on Thursday, declaring that Russian forces had invaded Ukraine.

Poroshenko summoned the council as pro-Russian separatist rebels tightened their grip on the town of Novoazovsk in southern Ukraine, opening a new front in the months long battle with Ukrainian government troops.

“Today the president’s place is in Kiev,” he said.

“I have decided to cancel my visit to Turkey because of the sharp escalation of the situation in the Donetsk region … as Russian forces have entered Ukraine,” he added.

Two columns of Russian tanks and military vehicles fired Grad missiles at a border post in southeastern Ukraine, then rolled into the country Thursday as overmatched border guards fled, the Associated Press quoted a top Ukrainian official as saying.

Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security Council, said the missiles from Russia were fired about 11 a.m. and about an hour and a half later the vehicles began an attack. They entered Ukraine from Veselo-Voznesenka, just across the border from Novoazovsk in the Rostov region in Russia.

A top NATO official said at least 1,000 Russian troops have poured into Ukraine with sophisticated equipment and have been in direct “contact” with Ukrainian soldiers, resulting in casualties, the news service reported. He called that a conservative estimate and said an additional 20,000 Russian troops were right over the border in Russia.

Novoazovsk had until recently escaped the conflict raging further north in Donetsk but came under heavy fire this week as separatist forces pressed into the city.

Ukrainian officials would be calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and a meeting of the European Commission to discuss the escalating crisis, Poroshenko’s media service said.

As tensions rose in Kiev, Russian state television broadcast an interview with a Ukrainian rebel leader who claimed that thousands of Russian citizens were fighting alongside the separatists in southeast Ukraine as volunteers.

Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk Peoples Republic, said many of the Russians who had joined the rebels’ ranks were retired military personnel or soldiers on leave.

“They are fighting with us understanding that it is their duty,” he said.

Arseniy Yatseniuk, Ukraine’s prime minister, appealed to the West for support, urging the United States, European Union, and the G7 countries to freeze Russian assets until Moscow halted military support for the separatists.

Ukraine accuses Russia of sending troops and military equipment across the border to support the rebels, who have lost ground to government troops in recent weeks and have opened up a new front in the southern Donetsk region bordering the Azov and Black Seas. Russia has repeatedly denied military involvement in the conflict in southeast Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday to demand an explanation of reports that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, according to her office.

The Kremlin media service said Putin had informed Merkel that Russia was planning to follow up on the delivery of humanitarian aid to Donetsk last week with another aid mission to the embattled region.

Zakharchenko said accusations by Kiev and the West that Russia had invaded Ukraine were a ploy to justify the Ukrainian military’s onslaught on rebel strongholds in Luhansk and Donetsk.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 Russian citizens had fought as volunteers alongside the separatist rebels in southeast Ukraine. “Some have gone home, more have stayed,” he said.

Among the volunteers are Russian servicemen on leave, who choose to give up their vacations to join “their brothers in the fight for freedom.”

Zakharchenko admitted that some of the Russian fighters had been killed in battle, adding weight to a spate of media reports describing the secret burials of soldiers in Russia. The Kremlin has dismissed the reports as “‘rumors.”

This story has been updated.

AFP Photo/Francisco Leong

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Ukraine, Russia Talks Begin As Kiev Holds ‘Russian’ Soldiers

Ukraine, Russia Talks Begin As Kiev Holds ‘Russian’ Soldiers

By Anna Smolchenko with Nicolas Gaudichet in Novoazovsk, Ukraine

Minsk (AFP) — The leaders of Russia and Ukraine held key talks Tuesday on the brutal conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels after the Kremlin admitted for the first time its troops had entered Ukrainian territory.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko shook hands with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, but there were few hopes of a breakthrough to defuse fighting some fear could trigger all-out war between Kiev and its former Soviet master Moscow.

Fears the conflict could intensify mounted when Ukraine on Monday released footage purporting to show 10 Russian soldiers it had captured on its territory.

A Moscow military source claimed the soldiers had crossed into Ukraine “by accident”.

“In Minsk at this meeting the fate of the world and Europe is being decided,” Poroshenko said in Russian as the roundtable with Putin kicked off alongside top EU officials and the leaders of Kazakhstan and Belarus.

Putin, however, barely mentioned the brutal fighting that has killed some 2,200 people in the east of Ukraine in his opening remarks, focusing instead on the damage Kiev’s recent agreement with the EU could have on Russia’s economy.

On the ground, battled raged in east Ukraine, with local authorities in the main rebel bastion of Donetsk said three civilians were killed in shelling overnight as the army pummels insurgent fighters.

But in Minsk, Kremlin strongman Putin strode confidently into the marble-lined meeting room ahead of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and a grim-faced Poroshenko.

Ashton called for the talks to be held in “the best possible spirit” but, in a sign of how high tensions are, it remained unclear if Poroshenko would meet one-on-one with Putin.

Kazakhstan leader Nursultan Nazarbayev urged both men to speak directly to each other or risk threatening the stability of the “entire world.”

– Soldiers captured –

Pressure soared after Kiev’s security service said on Sunday that paratroopers from Russia’s 98th airborne division had been captured by Ukrainian forces about 30 miles southeast of the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

Ukrainian media on Tuesday aired footage purporting to show captured Russian soldiers telling an interrogator that they crossed into Ukraine in armored convoys.

A Russian defense ministry source on Tuesday said soldiers had been “taking part in patrolling a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border”.

“They crossed it most likely by accident, on an unequipped, unmarked section,” Russian news agencies quoted the source as saying.

It was impossible to verify the footage or what condition the men were held in.

Kiev has long accused Moscow of stoking the separatist insurgency raging in its east — charges the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

“Officially, they are at exercises in various corners of Russia. In reality, they are participating in military aggression against Ukraine,” Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey said on his Facebook page.

But on the ground there appeared no end in sight to the four months of conflict that has plunged relations between Russia and the West to levels not seen since the end of the Cold War in 1991.

– Peace talks? –

Ukraine’s forces accused Russian troops of trying to open a “new front” after an armored convoy crossed onto government-held territory Monday in the south of Donetsk region.

AFP journalists reported shelling in Novoazovsk, a town on the coast of the Azov sea, and had to briefly take shelter in the basement of the City Hall together with the mayor.

Kiev also accused Russian army helicopters of launching a ferocious missile attack on a Ukrainian border position further to the north, killing four border guards and bringing the death toll to 12 soldiers in the past 24 hours.

The rebels previously announced the launch of a counter-offensive after losing swathes of territory to a push by government forces.

Officials from the EU and Russian-led Customs Union were set to discuss the crisis and trade issues after Ukraine’s new pro-Western leaders signed a landmark deal with the European Union in June that riled Russia.

The refusal by Kiev’s former president Viktor Yanukovych to ink the EU deal last year in favor of Moscow’s economic bloc sparked the protests that eventually led to his ouster and set off a chain of events that saw Russia annex Ukraine’s Crimea region and the pro-Moscow insurgency.

As Ukraine’s political transition continues, Poroshenko on Monday announced long-awaited early parliamentary elections for October 26.

The Kremlin also ratcheted up the pressure by announcing plans to send another aid convoy into eastern Ukraine “this week.”

Russia unilaterally sent about 230 lorries carrying what it claimed was 1,800 tonnes of humanitarian aid to the rebel-held city of Lugansk on Friday after accusing Kiev of intentionally delaying the mission.

Kiev condemned the move as a “direct invasion.”

AFP Photo/Segei Bondarenko

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