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Ukraine Cedes Donetsk Airport to Rebels as Fighting Continues Chaotic Retreat Follows Ukrainians’ Withdrawal From Donetsk Airport
(about 5 hours later)
MOSCOW — Ukrainian officials acknowledged on Thursday that they had relinquished to rebel forces control over the terminal of the airport in Donetsk, while artillery fire gutted a trolley bus in the embattled city, killing at least eight people, and evidence emerged of a growing Russian military role in the area. DONETSK, Ukraine — The ruins of the once gleaming and modern Donetsk airport, site of near relentless fighting in recent days, finally fell on Thursday to pro-Russian rebel forces who then paraded captured Ukrainian soldiers through the streets of the embattled city.
The airport, the scene of fierce battles in recent days, is nonfunctional, the terminal and runways having been destroyed months ago. Nonetheless, it has retained high symbolic value in the ongoing hostilities as the government’s last toehold in the city, the largest in the contested territory of southeastern Ukraine. The airport, which had been claimed by both sides, is nonfunctional, the terminal and runways having been destroyed months ago. Nonetheless, it has retained high symbolic value in the continuing hostilities as the government’s last toehold in the city, the largest in the contested territory of southeastern Ukraine.
At a news briefing in Kiev on Thursday, a Ukrainian military spokesman, Vladyslav Seleznyov, said that six soldiers had died in the fighting over the airport and 16 had been captured by forces of the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic before a decision was made to withdraw from the ruined terminal. By dawn on Thursday, it was clear the Ukrainian Army was in a chaotic and bloody retreat, leaving behind their dead in the ruins of the main terminal, a Russian news video showed. Later in the day, in an official statement, Ukrainian military officials acknowledged that they had lost the battle.
“Because of the constant shelling, the new terminal has been ruined almost entirely,” Mr. Seleznyov said. “Because this building has been destroyed completely, the decision was made to withdraw Ukrainian fighters from this building to new lines.” In Donetsk, rebels forced a dozen captured Ukrainian soldiers to kneel on the streets near where artillery fire had gutted a trolley bus, killing at least eight people, encouraging passers-by to beat and spit on them.
Another spokesman, Col. Andriy Lysenko, said that even as Ukrainian forces withdrew from the terminal building, they remained in possession of the airport’s control tower and runway. “Fascists!” one old woman yelled at them. “Who are the terrorists now?”
The renewed violence, in Donetsk and at a remote checkpoint north of Luhansk, another major separatist-held city, as well as reports of new movement by Russian troops, threatened to plunge the region into ever-deepening chaos. The renewed violence, in Donetsk and at a remote checkpoint north of Luhansk, another major separatist-held city, threatened to plunge the region into ever-deepening chaos.
At a briefing on Thursday afternoon, Colonel Lysenko said that Ukrainian intelligence services had documented a significant new mobilization of Russian military vehicles in the Rostov region, on the Russian side of the border, including BMD airborne infantry combat vehicles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, propelled artillery systems, mobile rocket launchers, fuel vehicles and cargo trucks. Deepening the sense that the region might be descending into a fresh period of bloodshed, Gen. Philip Breedlove, NATO’s top commander in Europe, said that the alliance’s analysts had noted the presence of sophisticated Russian military systems, electronic warfare and air defense systems, in the conflict zone. Previously, he said, the presence of these systems has been associated with an incursion of Russian troops and presaged a fresh round of fighting.
“A majority of the vehicles do not bear insignia, side markings or license plates,” Mr. Lysenko said. Speaking at a meeting of security officials in Kiev after the capture of the airport and public humiliation of its last, captured defenders, Ukraine’s president, Petro O. Poroshenko, vented frustration with a broken peace process.
Reports of a military mobilization on the Russian side of the border were confirmed by some Russian news agencies. The Russian military has not announced any recent training exercises, its previously justification for similar movement of troops and vehicles along the border. “If the enemy does not want to abide by the cease-fire, if the enemy doesn’t want to stop the suffering of innocent people in Ukrainian villages and towns, we will give it to them in the teeth,” Mr. Poroshenko said in a statement on his website.
In Brussels, NATO’s top commander in Europe, Gen. Philip Breedlove, told a news conference that Russian electronic warfare and air defense systems have been observed in eastern Ukraine, a sign based on past experience of a Russian military incursion. The Ukrainian Army and volunteer soldiers had held the airport through months of close combat. At times, Russian-backed rebels and Ukrainian soldiers occupied different floors in the same building. Holes in the floor and stairwells became front lines.
As details of the bus bombing, the second this month in the area, began to emerge, pro-Russian separatist leaders and senior Ukrainian government officials quickly traded accusations over who was responsible. The turning point came when rebels exploded one of the floors, raining concrete and debris onto the heads of Ukrainian forces on the level below.
Photographs showed a horrific scene of blood and shattered glass, and witnesses reported that mangled bodies were splayed across the seats. There were conflicting reports of up to 13 people killed. The airport fell as months of continual rebel shelling had destroyed all of its defensible positions, wrote Yuri Butusov, the editor of a Ukrainian military news portal, censor.net.
A doctor at the main hospital in Donetsk, interviewed on the Rossiya 24 television channel, said that nine people had been brought in with injuries from the bus bombing, and that five were in grave condition. In unusually graphic footage, Rossiya 24 showed dead passengers throughout the shattered vehicle as well as a burned body being removed from a passenger car that was also destroyed by the shelling. “The new and old terminals, the control tower and everything that could serve as a point of defense was destroyed,” he wrote. “And the airport is under direct fire, and the last surviving defenders left the new terminal only today.”
Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, speaking to reporters in Kiev, the capital, said, “Today, Russian terrorists once again committed a terrible act against humanity, and the Russian Federation bears responsibility for that.” For Ukraine, the airport was laden with symbolic value as the site of the first in a string of military victories last summer that ended in August with a Russian intervention and cease-fire.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry issued a statement saying that the shelling of the bus occurred at a location more than 10 miles from Ukrainian military positions and that “all facts” pointed to separatist forces as responsible. “Ukrainian soldiers defending the Donetsk airport were compelled to surrender what just a year ago was a wonderful, modern airport,” one volunteer unit, the Azov Battalion, posted on its website.
Separatist leaders said they believed the shelling had been carried out by provocateurs aligned with the Ukrainian military. In Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, issued a statement putting blame on the Ukrainian government and calling the bus attack “a crime against humanity, a rude provocation aimed at undermining the efforts on a peace settlement.” Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s military, said Ukrainian soldiers still defended some airport territory, without clarifying what. “The airport is still a battlefield,” he said.
Mr. Lavrov added: “It is becoming obvious that the party of war in Kiev, and its foreign patrons, are not stopped by fatalities. Everything must be done to step the shelling by Kiev of towns in southeastern Ukraine and to prevent the further pointless casualties among the civilians.” In the city, an angry crowd of Donetsk residents pounced upon a Ukrainian soldier marched by rebel troops to the site of the bus-trolley explosion. People screamed angrily at the soldier as he was held by rebels, some reaching out to slap him across the face, or punch the back of his head. At one point, the crowd surged in so close that the soldier bent over to escape their pokes and punches and was pummeled on his back until the rebels holding him managed to squeeze him through the crowd and into the front seat of a waiting SUV.
The bombing came the day after the Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switz., held up a piece of wreckage from another public bus, destroyed in an artillery attack on Jan. 13 near the town of Volnovakha, in which 13 people were killed. Pro-Russian separatist leaders and senior Ukrainian government officials were quick to trade accusations over who was responsible for the assault on the bus, with the foreign ministries of Ukraine and Russia issuing nearly identical statements calling for an objective investigation.
The yellow, metal panel from the side of the bus was pierced numerous times by shrapnel. “For me this is a symbol, a symbol of the terrorist attack against my country,” Mr. Poroshenko said, likening the bombing to the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper in Paris. A video taken in the aftermath of the early morning explosion showed the bus, which ran from an electrical connection to overhead lines, with its tires flattened, its sides punched in, filled with shards of concrete and stone and all of its windows either shattered or pocked with holes. A burned out car sat in the street nearby, and the building opposite had its front gate smashed and most of its windows blown out. There were conflicting reports of between eight and 13 people killed.
In his speech, Mr. Poroshenko said that thousands of regular-duty Russian troops had been moved across the border into eastern Ukraine, a charge that the Russian government has vehemently denied, demanding proof of such deployment. In Moscow, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, issued a statement putting blame on the Ukrainian government and calling the bus attack “a crime against humanity, a rude provocation aimed at undermining the efforts on a peace settlement.”
Late Wednesday night, the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France, at a meeting in Berlin, had reaffirmed commitment to a September cease-fire agreement, which called for pulling back heavy artillery from the conflict zone. Mr. Lavrov added: “It is becoming obvious that the party of war in Kiev, and its foreign patrons, are not stopped by fatalities. Everything must be done to stop the shelling by Kiev of towns in southeastern Ukraine and to prevent the further pointless casualties among the civilians.”
That agreement, reached in Minsk, Belarus, never really took hold, and intensifying fighting and mounting casualties in recent days seemed to leave little hope of restoring any semblance of a truce anytime soon. With both sides equipped with heavy weapons, artillery duels all too often miss by hundreds of yards or more, killing bystanders.
The strike in Donetsk came the day after President Poroshenko, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, held up a piece of wreckage from another public bus, destroyed in an artillery attack on Jan. 13 near the town of Volnovakha, in which 13 people were killed. In his speech, Mr. Poroshenko said that thousands of regular-duty Russian troops had been moved across the border into eastern Ukraine, escalating the conflict.
Fighting also intensified early Thursday in an area of remote Ukrainian checkpoints and small villages along the northern approach to the rebel stronghold of Luhansk. Ukraine military officials had said they were convinced they were facing regular Russian troops when the engagement began on Tuesday.
Late Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, both Checkpoints 29 and 31, north of Luhansk, and the nearby villages of Krymske and Nizhneye were subjected to persistent shelling. This was followed, Thursday afternoon, by what Ukrainian military officials described as a tank assault, which they said their forces were able to repel.
The three days of fighting, though, resulted in widespread damage to the two villages, said Yaroslav Galas, head of the department of communications for the regional administration. Only about 150 residents were left in Krymske, he said, about 10 percent of the usual population, and a huge fire at the local power station, visible for miles around, made it unlikely the village would ever be reinhabited, he said.
“You can say the situation there is an emergency,” Mr. Galas said.