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As Elections Loom, Fighting Turns Deadly in Ukraine Violence and Doubts About Credibility as a Troubled Ukraine Election Nears
(about 4 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — Four days before a watershed presidential election in Ukraine, a new round of deadly fighting flared in the east of the country on Thursday. At least 13 government soldiers were reported killed in an abrupt escalation of violence as pro-Russian separatists struck back against government efforts to subdue them. DONETSK, Ukraine — When two armed men on Thursday afternoon barged into the small yellow schoolroom that has served as Inna Mashenskaya’s makeshift election office, she stood up straight and began to argue. But when one of them, wearing sunglasses, patted the knife that was hanging from his belt, she stopped talking and surrendered control of her polling center.
The clashes could represent a risk for the interim authorities in Kiev, the capital, who have claimed to be getting the upper hand against the rebels, encouraged by rifts among separatist groups occupying public buildings in numerous cities in the southeast. “That is an argument I cannot win,” she said.
In a posting on Facebook, Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, accused Russia of escalating the conflict in eastern Ukraine and of trying to disrupt Sunday’s election. He called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and said he would provide “evidence” to support his claim. As Ukraine hurtles toward a presidential election on Sunday, the first national vote since an uprising toppled the elected government this year, Ukraine’s troubled east has emerged as the most serious risk to the vote and the country’s future.
News reports quoted acting President Oleksandr V. Turchynov as saying through a spokesman that the 13 soldiers died overnight in clashes near the town of Volnovakha, about 12 miles south of Donetsk. A new burst of violence, some of the worst in months, left at least 16 Ukrainian soldiers dead on Thursday, giving new life to what had appeared to be a waning conflict just three days before the critical vote, which Western governments hope will lift the country out of violent upheaval into the relative safety of politics.
The scope of the latest skirmishes in Ukraine was unclear, but The Associated Press said some of its journalists had seen 11 bodies at a government checkpoint in the village of Blahodatne in the Donetsk region. Yet the ambush of a Ukrainian military checkpoint was a major setback for the authorities in Kiev, and it suggested a renewed push by anti-Kiev fighters after weeks of growing disaffection with them among ordinary people here and increasingly rancorous divisions among their leaders.
The journalists said they had seen three charred Ukrainian armored personnel carriers and several other burned military vehicles, and quoted witnesses as saying that about 30 government troops had been injured in an attack by insurgents. The attack complicates an already troubled situation. Local election observers estimate that only about a tenth of polling stations will be able to open on Election Day in the Donetsk region — the country’s largest voting district, with about 10 percent of the population — undermining the credibility of the vote. Western observers have flooded into Ukraine, but so far the vast majority of them have chosen to avoid the eastern areas that are controlled by pro-Russian fighters.
In Volnovakha, according to an earlier account in the Ukrainian version of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, residents said the clashes involved pro-Russian fighters and the recently formed national guard, which is composed of pro-Ukrainian fighters and is associated with the Ukrainian security forces. Fearing kidnappings of foreigners, the local authorities are not objecting.
A spokesman for the Ukrainian military confirmed that heavily armed gunmen had attacked a military checkpoint in Volnovakha but declined to say how many people had been injured or killed. “I recommended that they not come,” said Valeriy Zhaldak, an aide to the governor of Donetsk, referring to foreign observers. “We’d be happy to see them, but it would end up as our headache.”
In a statement, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said anti-Kiev forces “ambushed and opened fire on a checkpoint with a mass of small arms, hand grenades and antitank mortars.” The statement said that the firing had ignited an ammunitions depot. “There are dead and wounded,” it said. The south and the east make up nearly half of the nation’s population — a crucial part of Ukraine’s collective voice. But people here are deeply conflicted about a country that most still want to be part of but in some ways no longer recognize as their own.
The statement added that one Ukrainian soldier had been killed and several others injured in fighting in the town of Rubezhnoye in the northwestern Luhansk region, where Valery Bolotov, the leader of the anti-Kiev forces, on Thursday declared martial law and called for a total mobilization. “You have this whole belt of discontent in the south and the east that doesn’t accept the legitimacy of Kiev, but doesn’t have an alternative option,” said Keith Darden, a political scientist at American University in Washington. “That’s the main story, and it’s really not clear how it ends.”
The military, in its statement, claimed that its troops were not advancing further into the region when anti-Kiev forces attacked them. Video footage posted to social networks revealed sirens blaring and church bells ringing in the city. Local media have reported that a bridge was destroyed in the fighting. The deposed leader, Victor F. Yanukovych, was from the east, and few here have any affection for him. Several of the current candidates come from the east and south, but they are strongly associated with Kiev and have little appeal to voters here.
The military spokesman said the fighting was continuing but declined to comment on casualties. More than 60 percent of people in eastern Ukraine are either undecided or not planning to vote in the election, according to a recent poll by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology.
The new fighting came as Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, for the first time offered a cautious and qualified confirmation that Moscow may be preparing to pull back some forces from areas near the border with Ukraine. “There’s no one to vote for,” said a 21-year-old rugby coach named Daniel. “No one liked Yanukovych — O.K. — but he was elected and legal. Why couldn’t they have just waited,” he asked, for the next election, which had been scheduled for March 2015.
“We’ve seen limited Russian troop activity vicinity of Ukraine border that may suggest that some of these forces are preparing to withdraw,” Mr. Rasmussen wrote on his Twitter account. “It is too early to say what this means, but I hope this is the start of a full and genuine withdrawal.” The ambush of the military checkpoint happened just before dawn on a highway near the town of Blahodatne, about an hour’s drive southwest of Donetsk. The military said that militants attacked the checkpoint with automatic weapons and grenades before fleeing in several vehicles, including armored vans.
He added, however: “Most of previously deployed Russian force remains near the Ukrainian border. We see continued Russian exercises.” A spokesman for the Donetsk regional governor, citing the health department, said that 16 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed. Aleksandr Bezugly, the head doctor for the hospital in nearby Volnovakha, said more than 20 had been hospitalized.
On several occasions, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has that the Kremlin’s forces were withdrawing from the region after conducting military maneuvers, which NATO says involved 40,000 soldiers. The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that four trainloads of weapons and 15 giant military transport planes loaded with troops and equipment had left border regions on Wednesday. A driver for the hospital said three bodies were badly burned around the neck and head. A burned armored personnel carrier lay on its side at the checkpoint, said the hospital driver, who identified himself only as Nikolai.
The withdrawals were from the Rostov, Bryansk and Belgorod regions of Russia, it said, adding that other troops were also heading back to their regular bases. “Probably they were sleeping in the armored vehicles when they attacked,” he said, eating a sandwich in the concrete garage at the hospital. “And they burned.”
The ministry also said the Russian Navy’s northern fleet was to begin previously unannounced drills immediately. The significance of that announcement was not immediately clear. Residents in Olginka, a village of houses and farms, said they had heard shooting just before dawn, but could not tell who had attacked the checkpoint. The checkpoint had appeared on the country road earlier this week, and several women in the village said that they had brought water and salo, a form of lard popular in Ukraine, to the soldiers.
Earlier this week, Mr. Turchynov told local news media that Kiev’s military campaign against the rebel groups was entering its “final phase” and vowed to “cleanse the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of terrorists.” He was speaking during a visit to a military base near the eastern city of Slovyansk. Klavdia Kulbatskaya, a spokeswoman for the Donetsk People’s Republic, said the republic was not involved in the attack, and the identity of the attackers remained in dispute.
But Denis Pushilin, the leader of a group of pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, denounced the military campaign and said that if it continued it could provoke a military response from Russia. The new fighting broke out as, for the first time, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the secretary general of NATO, offered a cautious and qualified confirmation that Moscow may be preparing to pull back some forces from areas near the border with Ukraine.
But the authorities in Kiev continued to blame Moscow for the unrest. Ukraine’s acting prime minister, Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, accused Russia of escalating the conflict and of trying to disrupt Sunday’s election, according to a statement on Facebook.
Election observers in Donetsk offered grim assessments. Sergey Tkachenko, head of the Donetsk chapter of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, a nonprofit group that monitors elections, said about eight election commissions had been seized by militants in the Donetsk region, and work at countless polling centers had not begun, out of fear they would be threatened, including some in Mariupol, a southern city where worker patrols have sharply reduced the clout of the separatists.
“Chaos will be up to here,” Mr. Tkachenko said, drawing a line across his throat with his index finger.
Ms. Mashenskaya, the poll worker, had worked for weeks to keep her polling center open. She had received neither pay nor voting materials after an earlier incident involving men in masks shut her headquarters. So she bought her official registry book at an office supply store, brought paper and pencils from home, and scrounged for fabric to drape over voting booths.
Her enthusiasm came less from a love of the democratic process and more from a fear of what her country might become without it.
“We’re like a suitcase without a handle — there’s something inside but no way to bring it anywhere,” said Ms. Mashenskaya, who is a psychologist. “I know we will elect someone who will give us a headache. But if there’s no election, we’re stuck in this dead end.”