Ukrainian separatists report heavy losses in Donetsk airport battle
Ukraine’s military retakes airport seized by rebels in Donetsk
(about 4 hours later)
DONETSK, Ukraine — Pro-Russian separatists said Tuesday they sustained big losses in a gun battle Monday for control of this city’s international airport as sporadic shooting continued around the airport.
DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine’s military on Tuesday pounded rebels who had seized the nation’s second-largest airport and threatened to use precision-guided weaponry to dislodge them from their headquarters, as leaders vowed to deal a decisive blow to the separatists in the eastern part of the country.
Denis Pushilin, a leader of the separatists’ self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon that about 50 rebels were killed in Monday’s fighting and about as many civilians in an unsuccessful battle to hold on to the airport. He said he did not have information on the number of injured.
A day after candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko was declared the overwhelming winner of a presidential election, Ukrainian leaders were newly resolute in their efforts to squash a nascent rebellion in their nation’s industrial heartland. Poroshenko said he intended to call on the United States for military supplies and training.
“The airport is not under our control,” Pushilin conceded. He also said that Ukrainian forces were threatening to end the rebels’ occupation of the Donetsk regional administration building with precision-guided bombs if the rebels did not lay down arms. “At the moment the situation is very tense, with a lot of threats from Kiev,” he said.
Top Ukrainian officials welcomed calls from Russia for talks but said their powerful neighbor was playing a double game by sending militants over the border, an assertion Russia denies. Poroshenko, meanwhile, spoke Tuesday to President Obama and was scheduled to meet with him in Europe next week.
Earlier Tuesday, a top Donetsk separatist leader, Pavel Gubarev, posted on his Facebook page that a rocket-propelled grenade hit a truck that was carrying wounded separatists from the battle at the airport, killing an estimated 35 and injuring 15. His claim could notimmediately be confirmed.
By day’s end, the Ukrainian government had retaken Donetsk’s Sergei Prokofiev International Airport, using Soviet-era fighter jets and attack helicopters, and the rebels were left to count their dead. The fighting that started Monday killed about 50 rebels, Denis Pushilin, a leader of the separatists’ self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic, said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon. About 50 civilians also were killed, he said. Neither number was immediately confirmed, although Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Tuesday that “dozens” of rebels had died.
Acting Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Tuesday that “dozens” of pro-Russian separatists have been killed in the intense fighting around the airport. He said he did not have precise numbers.
“The airport is not under our control,” Pushilin said. He also said Ukrainian forces were threatening to end the rebels’ occupation of the Donetsk regional administration building with precision-guided weaponry if they did not lay down their arms. “At the moment the situation is very tense, with a lot of threats from Kiev,” he said.
In one sign of the aggressive new push against the rebels, Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president-elect, said he wanted direct U.S. military aid to bolster his country’s weakened army.
Russia’s top diplomat, meanwhile, warned Kiev against going any further in its military assault on separatists. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow that any escalation would be a “colossal mistake,” according to the news agency Interfax.
In one sign of the aggressive new push against the rebels, Poroshenko said he wanted direct U.S. military aid to bolster his country’s weakened army.
“When your neighbor’s house is burning, you should lend him your hose,” Poroshenko said late Monday in an interview with Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post.
“When your neighbor’s house is burning, you should lend him your hose,” Poroshenko said late Monday in an interview with Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of The Washington Post.
Invoking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s World War II-era Lend-Lease program, Poroshenko said: “Now we should create a new security treaty exactly like Lend-Lease. . . . We should cooperate in military technical assistance and in advising assistance. We are ready to fight for independence, and we should build up the armed forces of Ukraine.”
Invoking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s World War II-era Lend-Lease program, Poroshenko said: “Now we should create a new security treaty exactly like Lend-Lease. . . . We should cooperate in military technical assistance and in advising assistance. We are ready to fight for independence, and we should build up the armed forces of Ukraine.”
Police said Tuesday morning that all roads to Donetsk’s Sergei Prokofiev International Airport were blocked because of sporadic gunfire. A large overturned military vehicle with its front wheel blown off was lying on a residential road a few miles from the airport.
Obama called Poroshenko on Tuesday to “offer the full support of the United States as he seeks to unify and move his country forward,” the White House said.
The Ukrainian government said its forces used fighter jets and helicopter gunships to help repel a rebel assault on the airport.
If Ukrainian officials embraced the United States on Tuesday, they used tough rhetoric against Russia, which they have accused of backing the separatists.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said Tuesday that it lost contact with four of its international election monitors in Donetsk on Monday night and has been unable to locate them.
“Russia is exporting terrorism, in the most brutal, unashamed manner possible,” Deputy Foreign Minister Danylo Lubkivsky told reporters in Kiev on Tuesday. He said a convoy of vehicles had attempted early Tuesday to enter Ukraine from Russia.
“The team was on a routine patrol east of Donetsk when contact was lost,” the OSCE said in a statement. “We have been unable to reestablish communication until now.”
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said Tuesday that four of its international election monitors in Donetsk lost contact after being stopped at a separatist checkpoint Monday night and that it has been unable to locate them.
The team of four Donetsk-based OSCE monitors was on a routine patrol at the border of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces when the organization last made contact with them, a spokeswoman said. The OSCE has posted about 30 monitors to Donetsk, and the four who have disappeared are of Estonian, Swiss, Turkish and Danish nationality, she said.
The four Donetsk-based OSCE monitors were on a routine patrol at the border of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces when the organization last made contact with them, said spokesman Michael Bociurkiw. The OSCE has posted about 30 monitors to Donetsk, and the four who have disappeared are of Estonian, Swiss, Turkish and Danish nationality, he said.
In Kiev, a military spokesman told reporters that Ukrainian security forces issued another ultimatum to separatists at the Donetsk airport.
Another OSCE monitoring team was seized by separatists in the eastern city of Slovyansk last month. The group was freed after more than a week.
“We have posed another ultimatum to them, and if they do not surrender, we will strike them with special weapons. This is one of the proofs we are going to continue the anti-terrorist operation and bring it to its logical end,” a spokesman for the Ukrainian military’s operations in the east, Vladislav Seleznev, told reporters Tuesday. Seleznev said that around 200 pro-Russian militants attacked the airport early Monday.
In Donetsk, the Ukrainian military used MiG fighter jets and Mi-8 and Mi-24 attack helicopters to press its assault against rebels who had taken the airport early Monday. By late Tuesday, the airport was back in government hands.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that any escalation would be a “colossal mistake,” according to Interfax.
“We will carry out these operations until not a single terrorist remains on the territory of Ukraine,” First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaliy Yarema said in Kiev, according to Interfax. He said that the fighting had reached a “turning point” and that Ukraine’s military was making gains.
In a telephone conversation with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Russian President Vladimir Putin “stressed the need for an immediate end to the punitive army operation in southeastern regions and the establishment of Kiev’s peaceful dialogue with representatives of the regions,” the Kremlin press office said.
The rebels “have already realized that making the Ukrainian army angry is tantamount to being one’s own enemy,” Yarema said. “They already had the chance to feel that during yesterday’s fighting at the Donetsk airport.”
Lavrov also denounced as “ridiculous” the prospect of new U.S. and European sanctions against Russia over the crisis in Ukraine. “These people are obviously engaged in looking for at least some sort of excuse to continue to exert pressure on us,” Lavrov told reporters in Moscow. Such attempts to exert “pressure” on Russia “have never produced any results,” he said.
If the pro-Russian separatists keep fighting, “precision-guided munitions will be used,” said a spokesman for the Ukrainian military’s operations in the east, Vladislav Seleznev.
Despite warnings from Russia, Ukraine’s military operations showed no sign of slowing down.
On Tuesday morning, all roads to the Sergei Prokofiev International Airport were blocked because of sporadic gunfire. A large overturned military-type vehicle with its front wheel blown off was lying on a residential road a few miles from the airport.
“We will carry out these operations until not a single terrorist remains on the territory of Ukraine," Ukrainian First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaliy Yarema told reporters in Kiev, according to Interfax. He said the fighting had reached a “turning point” and that Ukraine’s military was making gains.
Separatist rebels “have already realized that making the Ukrainian army angry is tantamount to being one’s own enemy,” Yarema said. “They already had the chance to feel that during yesterday’s fighting at the Donetsk airport.”
Seleznev confirmed that a Ukrainian military helicopter attacked a van carrying pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk on Monday, and he said that more details would be released pending an investigation. Gubarev, the separatist leader in Donetsk, said Tuesday that a van carrying injured separatists to the hospital was attacked.
Explosions and gun battles, with helicopters, paratroopers and warplanes, rocked the airport area Monday, just hours after Poroshenko, who won Sunday’s presidential election, declared in Kiev that he would seek to end the violent crisis plaguing eastern Ukraine and to unite the divided nation.
As a Ukrainian military helicopter exchanged fire with separatist militants along an airport highway and the thunder of mortar shells sent residents running for cover, Poroshenko, 48, told reporters in Kiev on Monday he would move quickly to bring peace and stability to the country and that he planned to visit the violence-wracked Donets Basin in his first trip as Ukraine’s leader.
The parallel realities underscored the depth of Poroshenko’s challenges. Without the main airport of the Donets Basin, Ukraine’s industrial heartland, under full government control, even the basic practicality of fulfilling his pledge to visit was in question.
Heavy fighting carried on throughout the night Monday in Slovyansk and in nearby eastern Ukrainian villages, the rebels told Interfax. Shelling appeared to damage residential buildings, a church and a student dorm, Interfax reported.
Poroshenko told reporters in Kiev on Monday that “there will be a sharp increase in theefficiency of anti-terrorist operations.”
“They won’t last two or three months; they’ll last a few hours,” he said.
Poroshenko also said, however, that peace could not come to eastern Ukraine without Moscow’s cooperation. He said he planned to visit Moscow to meet with Putin within the next few weeks.
In a neighborhood less than half a mile from the airport, Alexander Markhovin, 56, a retired miner, stood outside an addition to his house that was destroyed in the clashes.
In a neighborhood less than half a mile from the airport, Alexander Markhovin, 56, a retired miner, stood outside an addition to his house that was destroyed in the clashes.
He said the fighting started up again about 7 a.m. Tuesday. He and his wife were unharmed, having sheltered in an older part of the house.
He said the fighting started up again about 7 a.m. Tuesday. He and his wife were unharmed, having sheltered in an older part of the house.
“We don't know what it was because . . . smoke covered everything," he said, standing in his carport where they had retrieved what they could, including two icons. "It was smoldering.”
“We don’t know what it was because . . . smoke covered everything,” he said, standing in his carport, where they had retrieved what they could, including two icons. “It was smoldering.”
‘Their goal is to turn Donbas into Somalia’
By late Tuesday, an unnerving calm settled over the city of nearly a million people, which until this week had largely escaped the violence that had plagued the region. Streets seemed almost deserted, and many people headed out of town to stay with relatives. Shops and cafes were closed well before the 8 p.m. curfew called for by separatist leaders.
Poroshenko faces the daunting task of quelling the pro-Russian rebellion in the east while meeting the demands of the European-leaning constituency that elected him — tamping down corruption and modernizing the former Soviet republic’s economy. Whether the billionaire can successfully navigate Ukraine’s turbulent relationship with Russia will also be key.
Those leaders seemed increasingly under stress, both from the military assault launched from Kiev and from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s willingness to engage with the new Ukrainian leadership.
Poroshenko, a chocolate magnate who ran on a platform of bringing Ukraine closer to its European neighbors, vowed Monday to launch a swift military operation to crush the separatists, whom he likened to “Somali pirates.”
“We warned Russia and we warned the international community that the elections on the 25th of May would not change the situation,” Donetsk separatist leader Pavel Gubarev said in a video statement posted on his Facebook page, in which he spoke from a room where images of Putin and former Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez were hanging on the wall.
“Their goal is to turn Donbas into Somalia, and I will never allow such things to happen in my country,” he said, using another name for the Donets Basin and apparently citing the African nation as an example of a place where militants have more power than the state.
“Poroshenko is again coming to us for more bloodshed,” Gubarev said.
But he offered an olive branch to eastern Ukraine by saying that elections should take place to give residents there a measure of local control. And he conceded that the cooperation of Russia — which Kiev and the West have accused of fomenting the separatist rebellion — would be crucial to ending the violence.
Kunkle reported from Donetsk. Abigail Hauslohner in Moscow and Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.
“Russia is our biggest neighbor,” Poroshenko said. “Stopping war and bringing peace to all Ukraine, bringing stability to the eastern part of Ukraine, that will be impossible without the participation of Russia.”
Poroshenko said those talks would start as early as next month, adding that he and Putin “know each other quite well.”
Russian officials said Monday that the Kremlin was ready to hold talks with Poroshenko, signaling a more conciliatory tone after months of finger-pointing between Kiev and Moscow amid a conflict that has left Russia’s relationship with the United States and Europe at its lowest point since the Cold War.
Lavrov said that Ukraine’s election Sunday was “not without problems.” But Russia will “respect the will expressed by the Ukrainian people,” he told reporters in Moscow, according to Interfax.
“We, as our president said repeatedly, are ready for a dialogue with Kiev representatives, ready for a dialogue with Petro Poroshenko,” Lavrov said.
Battle for the airport
The intense clash at the Donetsk airport, which continued Monday night, seemed to show a hardening of wills from the government and the rebels. The separatists — who have felt their cause jeopardized by internal divisions, waning support from Moscow and a decision by industrial magnate Rinat Akhmetov to throw his financial might to the side of unity — had declared martial law and demanded that Ukrainian troops leave.
The rebels seized the airport sometime before 7 a.m., when the airport’s Web site announced its closure and the cancellation of flights without an explanation. But the Ukrainian military showed its resolve to take the fight to the militants. Shortly after 1 p.m., four Ukrainian helicopters flew over the treetops near the airport, and within minutes, machine-gun fire erupted west of the terminal.
Explosions resounded along a major highway for hours, as armed rebels in fatigues and balaclavas darted through nearby woods. The helicopters opened fire on the rebels, and military jets zoomed low to drop chaff — bits of aluminum or small flares that military aircraft expel to confuse heat-seeking or radar-guided missiles — over the forest and highway.
A helicopter gunship destroyed a rebel-held antiaircraft array that was being used against Ukrainian security forces, said Seleznev, the Ukrainian military spokesman.
Shots continued to ring out well after sundown, and it was unclear Monday night who was in control of the airport or how many people had been injured or killed in the fighting.
Observers say vote was fair
Poroshenko, a seasoned politician, captured 54 percent of Sunday’s presidential vote in an election that attracted a 60 percent turnout across the country, according to the Central Election Commission. In the Donetsk region, turnout was 15 percent, and in the eastern region of Luhansk it was 39 percent.
International observers said the elections were fair and well-organized, despite the voting problems in those eastern regions.
“The disenfranchisement in these places of voters represents a serious violation of rights. At the same time, it does not negate the legitimacy of the election,” said former U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who led a delegation of observers from the National Democratic Institute.
Still, some U.S. politicians who were in Kiev to monitor the elections said Russia disrupted the vote in the east — an action that the Obama administration previously said would trigger further sanctions against Russia.
“If there are other sanctions bills that come on the floor of the House, yeah, absolutely, I’m going to evaluate those with likely a very positive or favorable light,” said Rep. Michael C. Burgess (R-Tex.), who was in Kiev to observe the voting.
The election will give Ukraine’s leader a stronger negotiating position after months when an interim government, which took office after the ouster of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, had no popular mandate. And Poroshenko, who has worked as a cabinet minister in both pro-Kremlin and pro-Western governments, is considered well-placed to navigate between the two camps.
Poroshenko allied himself with Ukraine’s protest movement shortly after Yanukovych rejected a trade deal in November that would have moved Ukraine toward integration with the European Union. Yanukovych fled to Russia in February.
Russia has appeared to swing its support from the separatists to the new government in Kiev in recent days. But the Kremlin may not have any more intention now than it did several months ago of seeing Kiev slip out of its sphere of influence and into Europe’s. Continued chaos in the east may serve Russia’s interests by discouraging Ukraine’s prospects for E.U. membership.
“It’s not the end of the game,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, a Moscow-based political analyst and the editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine. “I think Putin’s view on Ukraine is that it is a very long-term crisis,” he said. And Poroshenko “will need to seek deals with Russia and the eastern part of the country.”
Adding to the challenge, the Kremlin’s intentions may be inherently at odds with Poroshenko’s goals, one analyst said.
“I think Russia’s strategy in the Ukrainian crisis is related to its fundamental desire to prevent Ukraine from joining the European Union and NATO in any kind of way,” said Grigory Golosov, a political science professor at St. Petersburg European University.
Ukrainians who voted for Poroshenko in more stable regions of the country expressed hope over the weekend that his experience — and the lesser nature of his corruption, compared with that of his peers — would give him an edge in resolving the nation’s conflict.
Buoyed by the election’s success, Kiev Mayor-elect Vitali Klitschko said Monday that it was time to clear the city’s central square of the barricades and protester encampments that have blocked roads in and out of the area since November.
The presence of the encampments has been a goad to separatists who seized government buildings and set up barricades in eastern Ukraine; they accuse Kiev of enforcing a double standard.
Birnbaum reported from Kiev and Hauslohner from Moscow. Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.
