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One killed as Ukrainian shell hits Russian border town Ukraine's shelling will have 'irreversible consequences', warns Russia
(about 2 hours later)
A Ukrainian shell hit a town on the Russian border, killing one person and seriously injuring two others, Russia's foreign ministry said. Russia's foreign ministry says the Ukrainian army is responsible for the shelling that killed a man inside Russian territory, warning that the incident could have "irreversible consequences".
The ministry labelled the incident a provocation and warned of the possibility of "irreversible consequences, the responsibility for which lies on the Ukrainian side". Russian investigators say that a man was killed and a woman injured when a shell fired from Ukrainian territory landed in the courtyard of a private house in the village of Donetsk, in Russia's Rostov region.
Russia said the shell hit the courtyard of a residential building in the Russian town of Donetsk early on Sunday. The town borders Ukraine's restless east, where a pro-Russia separatist insurgency has waged a three-month-long battle with the Kiev government. "Naturally, this action will not be left without a corresponding reaction," deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin said in a radio interview on Sunday. "The talk with the Ukrainian side on this issue is going to be serious and tough."
Russia has made repeated claims that settlements along its porous border with Ukraine – which the west and Kiev say is a key supply route for the rebels – have been hit by Ukrainian fire, but no deaths have been previously reported. The weekend has seen an escalation of both military action and rhetoric in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, as Ukrainian jets carried out airstrikes against separatist positions which had killed 23 Ukrainian servicemen in an attack using Grad missiles on Friday.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will attend the World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro to take part in a handover ceremony with the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, and the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter. Russia will host the 2018 World Cup. "For every soldier's life, the militants will pay with dozens and hundreds of their own," said Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko after Friday's attack.
Brazilian officials said on Saturday that the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko would also attend the match, but Poroshenko announced on Sunday that he would not be going. The Ukrainian army retook a number of towns that had been controlled by separatists in the past fortnight, including the rebel stronghold of Slavyansk, from which hundreds of fighters fled.
Talks between Russia and Ukraine over a ceasefire between the rebels and Kiev's troops have stalled in recent weeks, as Ukrainian troops have succeeded in pushing insurgents out of key towns in the east. The regional centres of Donetsk and Luhansk now contain the main concentration of separatist forces. As large urban conurbations any attempt to take them back by force is likely to incur major civilian casualties.
In Luhansk, the self-declared Luhansk People's Republic claimed it now had its own air force, made up of a single Su-25 fighter jet seized from the Ukrainian army. This could not immediately be confirmed.
As the violence increases, fears are mounting that Russia and Ukraine could be edging towards some kind of military confrontation again, after a period when it had appeared that the tension was decreasing.
"This incident is evidence of the very dangerous escalation of tension in the Russian-Ukrainian border area, and could have irreversible consequences, the responsibility for which lies with the Ukrainian side," said the foreign ministry's official statement, referring to the shelling of Russian territory.
After Russia annexed Crimea, there were worries that Moscow may order an armed intervention in east Ukraine as well, however these fears were calmed last month when Putin asked parliament to rescind a declaration allowing him to use troops in Ukraine.
Nevertheless, a source close to the Kremlin in Moscow said he believed that while the decision had been taken not to intervene in Ukraine, this could change at any moment.
"I think all it would take would be one day where, say, 300 people are killed in the east and Putin will be simply obliged to act," said the source. "I don't think you can rule it out yet, not at all."
Putin is in Brazil where he is due to watch the World Cup final on Sunday evening. Ukraine's Poroshenko had also planned to attend the event but cancelled at the last minute, citing the deteriorating situation in the east.