Ukraine reaches bloody milestone
Longest conflict in Europe since World War Two
DONETSK OBLAST,
UKRAINE • Svetlana Karpenko had just moved her mother Nina to the television room when a Grad rocket slammed down outside her window, raking the elderly woman’s bedroom with fire and shrapnel.
“Two steps closer and it would have got us,” said Karpenko’s husband, Oleg Gostrenko, as the three of them cleaned up debris and artillery boomed in the distance. Along with a church and a preschool, their two-storey block of flats was one of more than 100 buildings damaged last week as at least 40 rockets rained down on the town of Novoluhanske, kilometres from Russia-backed separatist territory in eastern Ukraine.
By a stroke of luck, many residents of Novoluhanske were at a concert when the rockets landed, and only eight were injured in the attack. But more than 10,300 people have been killed since war broke out between the Ukrainian government and separatists heavily backed by Russia in 2014. Last Wednesday it surpassed the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia as the longest violent conflict in Europe since the Second World War. And despite an armistice and peace process agreed in Minsk in 2015, this war of attrition has been heating up.
A special monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) registered no fewer than 1,000 ceasefire violations a day in December. At least seven Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the past week. “It doesn’t look like this war will end, because no one wants it to end, not (president Petro) Poroshenko,” Karpenko said. “Our guys shoot, they respond. They’re shooting on both sides.” Ukraine and the self-proclaimed breakaway states of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics started a “New Year ceasefire” on December 23 and reiterated their commitment to the steps of the Minsk peace process.
Negotiators struggled to finalize a long-delayed prisoner exchange now set for Wednesday. A Ukrainian soldier was killed within hours of the ceasefire starting, and both sides accused each another of breaking the truce. Alexander Hug, the deputy head of the OSCE mission, has said that both sides “blatantly disregard” the Minsk agreements.
Despite speculation that Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House could help Russia and the U.S. work towards a settlement, antagonism between Moscow and Washington over the conflict has only mounted.
Russian officers quit a joint ceasefire control centre with Ukraine last Tuesday after Kyiv said it would begin taking foreigners’ fingerprints at the border. Kurt Volker, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine conflict, suggested their departure was the preface to the “massive escalation” in violence later that week. On Thursday, it emerged that the Trump administration had approved the export of US$41.5 million worth of .50-calibre Barrett M107A1 sniper rifles to Ukraine, a move the Russian Foreign Ministry said would encourage “major bloodshed.”
Canada, meanwhile, added Ukraine to its Automatic Firearms Country Control List earlier this month, meaning Canadian companies and individuals can now apply to the government for permission to export prohibited weapons and other equipment to the country.
The move fulfilled a commitment
IT DOESN’T LOOK LIKE THIS WAR WILL END, BECAUSE NO ONE WANTS IT TO END.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made in a September meeting with Poroshenko. Canada has also sent both police and military personnel to Ukraine to train officers and soldiers in the country’s military, and has directly provided about $16 million in non-lethal military equipment with more than $7 million more promised by 2019.
Trudeau also said after his autumn meeting with Poroshenko that he thinks there is a “very strong potential role” for a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, but was noncommittal about whether Canadian troops might be involved in such an effort.
In Novoluhanske, Svetlana Karpenko had been planning a new year’s celebration, but “now there won’t be any holiday” to save money for new windows, she said, and the best present would be an end to the violence.
“We don’t need riches from the sky, just peace,” she said. “It’s been four years of war, but we have nowhere else to go.”