By Aliaksandr Kudrytski A pro-Russian rebel stands on guard at a checkpoint near the airport in Donetsk on Nov.... Read More Pro-Russian separatists increased the intensity of attacks on Ukrainian troops in the country’s embattled east, a military spokesman said, as the U.S. sent anti-mortar radar systems to aid the fight against rebels. The step-up in violence in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions left four government soldiers and five civilians dead and 10 wounded in the past 24 hours from mines and shelling, Ukraine defense spokesman Andriy Lysenko said today in his daily briefing from Kiev. The rebels also suffered “heavy losses” during a failed assault at Donetsk Airport, he said, without elaborating on casualties among the attackers. “Terrorists continue to ignore the principles of humanitarian law and international conventions by placing antipersonnel land mines near civilian areas,” Lysenko said. “Casualties from such explosives are comparable with casualties caused by shelling.” Leaders from the European Union and the U.S., including Vice President Joe Biden, accuse Russia of not abiding by a September truce signed in Minsk, while Ukraine says Russian troops and vehicles continue to cross the border in the east. Russia denies it’s fomenting the war, saying the U.S. and EU are responsible because of their support of the Kiev government, which came to power after former President Viktor Yanukovych, a Kremlin ally, was ousted early in the year. Lysenko said Russia continues to shell Ukraine from across the border and is launching drones to monitor Ukraine government troop positions. He also told reporters that 20 Russian military vehicles crossed into the country in the past day. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the U.S.’s role in the conflict is part of a global plan to hem in Russia and implement regime changes where possible. U.S. strategy is “directed, not at the military defeat of the enemy, but more at changing regimes in countries carrying out politics that Washington doesn’t like,” Lavrov said today at a Council on Foreign and Defense Policy assembly in Moscow. “It uses financial pressure, economic pressure” and “surely uses informational and ideological influence, supported by financed non-government organizations.” Russia is readying another convoy of humanitarian aid to eastern Ukraine and will leave “when ready,” TASS reported, citing Vladimir Stepanov, the deputy head of the Russian Emergencies Ministry. Radar Systems Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren told reporters yesterday that the U.S. military has delivered the first three of 20 light-weight radar systems that would detect and warn of incoming mortar fire. U.S. personnel will begin training Ukrainian counterparts in mid-December to operate the systems, Warren said, according to the U.S. Defense Department’s website. The conflict has intensified since rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk held elections earlier this month, which Biden condemned during his Kiev visit yesterday with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. He also said the U.S. wouldn’t accept Russia’s March annexation of the Crimea peninsula. “They were not democratic elections,” Biden said yesterday. “They were a Kremlin-orchestrated farce. Let me say as clearly as I can: America does not and will not recognize the Russian occupation and annexation of Crimea.” Poroshenko joined other Ukrainian leaders in commemorating the 1930s famine that in on Nov. 28, 2006, lawmakers recognized as a genocide because millions of Soviet Ukrainians starved to death, blaming the policies of then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. The genocide decree was signed by former President Viktor Yushchenko. Ukrainian Famine Poroshenko today likened the events in the east with the earlier famine, saying that Ukraine suffered then because it wasn’t a self-standing nation as a member of the Soviet Union and there was no national army to protect Ukrainians’ interests. “Ukrainian peasants were the keepers of the national spirit of Ukraine, and it was against them that the most dreadful weapon of killing by starvation was used,” he said at a memorial obelisk to the famine on the bank of the Dnipro River. “The spiritual descendants of Stalin have not dissolved themselves in the sea of history,” Poroshenko said. “They are celebrating in a bloody ball in the temporarily occupied territories.” Yesterday, he vowed to push ahead with reforms that have also kept hobbled development as the country works to form a new coalition government. Reforms Now “Reforms must be started immediately,” he told state television. Ukraine’s “aim is to reach European standards of living gradually so that in 2020 we will be able to apply for EU membership. That is what the draft coalition agreement is about.” Meanwhile, the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic said it will ship debris from the downed Malaysia Air (MAS) liner to Kharkiv tomorrow at 10 a.m. local time. The debris is packed into 11 rail cars, while the train will pull another passenger coach for officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Netherlands.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 17:18:23 +0000
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