The stories you want. The opinions that matter.
No, thanks
Tag: ukraine violence
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

Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Dutch Go Into Mourning For Victims Of Malaysia Jet Downing

Dutch Go Into Mourning For Victims Of Malaysia Jet Downing

By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times

LONDON — The Netherlands went into national mourning Friday over the scores of Dutch victims in the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, which took off from Amsterdam but never reached its destination.

More than half of the 298 people who died were Dutch. The tally reached 173 on Friday, up from the 154 identified earlier.

Flags throughout the Netherlands flew at half staff. Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who rushed home from vacation to deal with the crisis, called the crash a deep tragedy for his country and demanded a full investigation.

Other European leaders, including British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, also pressed for a complete investigation into how the jetliner was struck by a missile Thursday over eastern Ukraine, near the Russian border.

The plane was en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, where many anguished relatives of passengers gathered and received confirmation of the crash. The airport is one of Europe’s busiest.

“It is an absolutely appalling, shocking, horrific incident that has taken place, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of what happened and how this happened,” Cameron said. “If, as seems possible, this was brought down, then those responsible must be held to account, and we must lose no time in doing that.”

For the Netherlands, it’s the worst aviation disaster in years involving Dutch citizens. In 1992, an El Al cargo jet slammed into an apartment building near Schiphol, killing 43 people.

AFP Photo / Dominique Faget

Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Separatist Rocket Attacks, Bus Ambush Kill 30 In Eastern Ukraine

Separatist Rocket Attacks, Bus Ambush Kill 30 In Eastern Ukraine

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Separatist rebels attacked a Ukrainian military base with Russian-made Grad rockets, killing 19 troops and boosting the overnight death toll to about 30 in the latest flare-up of fighting in eastern Ukraine, Russian media and Ukrainian officials said Friday.

It was the deadliest day for the Kiev government since fighting resumed last week after a 10-day cease-fire and dampened a mood of resurgency that followed the Ukrainian troops’ success last weekend in sweeping out militants from their strongholds in Slovyansk and Kramatorsk.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko vowed to avenge the rocket attack on the military base at Zelenopillya, on the Russian border in the Luhansk region.

“For every life of our soldiers the rebels will pay with tens and hundreds of their own,” Petroshenko said in a statement on the presidential website.

Four other Ukrainian troops were killed in a separate attack on border guards near Luhansk city, military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznev said in a post on his Facebook page that put the cumulative overnight death toll at 23 government forces.

Separatist rebels armed with Russian-made guns and commanded by a Russian special forces veteran also ambushed a bus carrying miners home from the DTEK enterprise near Luhansk, killing five of the workers, Interfax news agency reported.

DTEK is part of Ukrainian magnate Rinat Akhmetov’s sprawling industrial empire, which has been targeted by the rebels in an effort to break the eastern Ukrainian production facilities from their management and integration with associated industries in Kiev and western Ukraine.

Interfax quoted the director of Akhmetov’s eastern enterprises as saying the bus attack had forced the company to suspend operations at four mines in the Luhansk region that employ 4,500.

Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency quoted a representative of the rebels’ proclaimed Peoples Republic of Donetsk as saying the death toll from the attack in Zelenopillya was believed to have killed at least 30 Ukrainian troops and destroyed an armored convoy of the 24th Motorized Division from Lviv.

The overnight attacks showed the separatists remain capable of inflicting serious harm on the government as it carries out what it calls an “anti-terrorist operation” to recover control of administrative buildings, police stations and border crossings.

Ukrainian authorities and their Western allies accuse Russian President Vladimir Putin of arming and instigating the rebellion after Russian troops seized and annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in March.

Putin has denied having a hand in the violence that has taken well over 500 lives since late March. However, dozens of separatist fighters killed in the clashes over the past three months have been identified as Russian citizens and some, like Donetsk military commander Igor Strelkov, openly concede they came from Russia to aid the insurgency.

AFP Photo/Andrey Sinitsin

Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Ukrainian President Orders Evacuation Corridors To Help Civilians Escape Fighting

Ukrainian President Orders Evacuation Corridors To Help Civilians Escape Fighting

By Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday ordered government security agencies to help civilians escape separatist fighting and relocate to safety, his office announced.

The order to create civilian evocation routes out of areas where at least 200 people have died in more than two months of fighting coincides with an escalation in the intensity of clashes and what appear to be more concerted efforts by Ukraine’s beleaguered government forces to roll back the gains of the pro-Russia separatists.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian military operation aimed at recovering rebel-occupied buildings and facilities in eastern Ukraine said 43 separatist gunmen died in failed attempts early Tuesday to seize airfields in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, along the border with Russia.

Poroshenko, who was inaugurated Saturday, has vowed to end the fighting between government forces and the pro-Russia separatists by the end of this week. His order for aid to fleeing civilians could signal intent to intensify the government forces’ campaign to drive out the gunmen.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry reported unspecified progress a day earlier in negotiations with Russia in Kiev that are being mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The OSCE’s involvement is significant as the 57-nation alliance is the only security group that includes Russia and Ukraine, and the agency’s mediator, veteran Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, has experience brokering peace agreements in other regional hot spots such as Georgia and Chechnya.

“We’re at the point where there is the real possibility of achieving a cease-fire,” OSCE chairman and Swiss President Didier Burkhalter told journalists in Bern on Tuesday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has insisted that the Ukrainian government stand down its troops in eastern Ukraine to facilitate a peace accord with the rebels who control key government facilities in at least a dozen towns and cities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Poroshenko has given no indication that he will comply with that demand, instead offering Russian gunmen involved in the fighting free passage out to their home country if they lay down their arms.

Putin has steadfastly denied arming or instigating the rebels seeking to wrest territory from Ukraine and annex it to Russia, and he has given no response to the separatists’ appeals to link the areas they have seized and proclaimed independent to the neighboring state. The Kremlin leader’s handling of the eastern Ukraine conflict has differed sharply from his swift annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region in March after a hasty and dubious referendum.

At a separate meeting in St. Petersburg, the Russian imperial capital, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov conferred with his counterparts from Poland and Germany on ways to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Lavrov welcomed Poroshenko’s plan to provide civilian evacuation corridors but called again for a halt in all military operations, claiming that government attacks have escalated in some areas.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees officials said last week that at least 10,000 people had been displaced by the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Lavrov said Russia was caring for more than 30,000 refugees from Ukraine in the neighboring Rostov region alone. Convoys of civilians have been seen leaving embattled areas like Slovyansk and Kramatorsk on a daily basis as fighting has intensified over the last two weeks.

The statement on the Ukrainian presidential website said Deputy Social Policy Minister Vitaly Mushchynin met with the regional UNHCR representative to discuss means of providing evacuees with accommodation, social assistance, pensions and employment in the areas to which they are relocated.

AFP Photo/Sergei Supinsky