(DONETSK-IZVARINO BORDER CROSSING Russia)
Trucks from a Russian aid convoy started crossing back into Russia on
Saturday after igniting a storm of anger in Western capitals a day
earlier by driving into Ukraine without the permission of the government in Kiev.
The return of the trucks may help ease the tension to some extent in
time for the arrival of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Ukrainian
capital later on Saturday for talks on how to end the crisis over Ukraine.
Western leaders had joined Kiev in calling the Russian convoy — about
220 white-painted trucks loaded with tinned food and bottle water — an
illegal incursion onto Ukraine’s soil, and demanded that they be
withdrawn as soon as possible.
A Reuters journalist at the Donetsk-Izvarino border crossing, where
the convoy rolled into Ukraine on Friday, said over 100 trucks had
passed back into Russia and more could be seen in the distance arriving at the crossing.
Russian state television had earlier broadcast footage of some of the
trucks being unloaded at a distribution depot in the city of Luhansk,
eastern Ukraine.
The city is held by separatist rebels who are encircled by Ukrainian
government forces, and has been cut off from power and water supplies
for weeks. International aid agencies have warned of a humanitarian
crisis.
NATO said it had evidence that Russian troops had been firing
artillery at Kiev’s forces inside Ukraine – fuelling Western allegations
that the Kremlin is behind the conflict in an effort undermine the
Western-leaning leadership in Kiev.
The White House made the same allegation. “We have seen the use of
Russian artillery in Ukraine in the past days,” said U.S. deputy
national security advisor Ben Rhodes.
Russia denies giving any material help to the rebellion in eastern
Ukraine, a mainly Russian-speaking region. It accuses Kiev, with the
backing of the West, of waging a war against innocent civilians.
The conflict in Ukraine has dragged Russian-Western relations to
their lowest ebb since the Cold War and sparked a round of trade
sanctions that are hurting already-fragile economies in European and
Russia.
HOMES DESTROYED
In the rebels biggest strong hold, the city of Donetsk, there was
unusually intense shelling on Saturday. That may be part of a drive by
government forces to achieve a breakthrough in time for Ukrainian
Independence Day, which falls on Sunday.
The crisis over Ukraine started when mass protests in Kiev ousted a
president who was close to Moscow, and instead installed leaders viewed
with suspicion by the Kremlin.
Soon after that, Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and a
separatist rebellion broke out in eastern Ukraine. In the past weeks,
the momentum has shifted towards Ukraine’s forces, who have been pushing
back the rebels.
The separatist are now encircled in their two strongholds, Luhansk and Donetsk.
Reuters reporters in the city of Donetsk said that most of the
shelling was taking place in the outskirts, but explosions were also
audible in the center of the city.
In Donetsk’s Leninsky district, a man who gave his name as Grigory,
said he was in the toilet on Saturday morning when he heard the
whistling sound of incoming artillery. “Then it hit. I came out and half
the building was gone.”
The roof of the building had collapsed into a heap of debris. Grigory
said his 27-year-old daughter was taken to hospital with injuries to
her head. He picked up a picture of a baby from the rubble. “This is my
grand son,” he said.
In another residential area, about 5 km north of the city center, a
shop and several houses had been hit. Residents said two men, civilians,
were killed.
Praskoviya Grigoreva, 84, pointed to two puddles of blood on the
pavement near a bus stop that was destroyed in the same attack. “He’s
dead. Death took him on this spot,” she said.
RIVAL CELEBRATIONS
In the Ukrainian capital, preparations were under way for
Independence Day celebrations, twenty-three years after the collapse of
the Russian-dominated Soviet Union. The day, which will include a
military parade, has taken on added meaning for Ukrainians because of
the fighting in the east.
“We are a peaceful people. But we are ready to pay, and we are paying
in blood and sweat, for the right to live under this flag, under this
sky and among these fields,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said
at a ceremony.
Many Ukrainians were buoyed this week when the spire of a landmark
Moscow skyscraper was painted, clandestinely, in the blue-and-yellow of
the Ukrainian flag.
A Ukrainian extreme sportsman said he had done it as a patriotic piece of performance art.
In Donetsk city center, the separatist administration had set up an
exhibition of captured Ukrainian military hardware. They planned to
display it in their own festivities on Sunday intended as a counterpoint
to the celebrations in Kiev.
(Reuters)
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