Ukrainian cease-fire imperiled
Rebels down helicopter, kill 9
KIEV, Ukraine — A cease-fire in eastern Ukraine appeared to break down Tuesday when a rebel attack on a military helicopter killed nine people and a separate assault killed two soldiers, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin took steps to support the neighboring country’s tenuous peace process.
Putin asked parliament to revoke his legal authority to invade Ukraine. He also said he supports the continuation of the cease-fire and direct negotiations between the Kiev government and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
But both sides traded accusations Tuesday that the other had violated the truce, and the downing of the helicopter near the rebel-held city of Slovyansk dashed hopes for peace a day after the first talks between the warring parties.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement after the helicopter downing that he may end the cease-fire early and that he had ordered military leaders to open fire in response to any attack. The truce is set to expire Friday morning.
A Ukrainian military spokesman, Vladimir Seleznev, said on his Facebook page that the Mi-8 helicopter was struck by a shoulder-fired missile shot from the village of Bylbasovka, just outside Slovyansk.
The helicopter was delivering monitoring equipment, he said, and all nine people aboard were killed. Shelling at a checkpoint outside Slovyansk killed two other soldiers, he said.
The deaths broke an uneasy quiet that had settled over the region after proRussian separatists agreed to the cease-fire Monday. The separatists are not a unified force and have at times battled internally. Theleader of the Slovyansk separatists, a Russian citizen who goes by the name of Igor Strelkov, was not at the talks, where former President Leonid Kuchma represented Poroshenko.
The main separatist interlocutor at the talks, Alexander Borodai, said Tuesday on Russian state television that the discussions “turned out to be utter bluff. Kiev has not stopped the war.”
Putin, in Vienna to drum up support for a proposed natural gas pipeline to Europe that would bypass Ukraine, said he made the request to rescind his powers to invade the country because he and his government “want to create conditions for its peace process.”
He called the fighting near Slovyansk “sad,” though he did not specifically address the helicopter attack.
Poroshenko, speaking earlier in the day, called Putin’s move the “first practical step of support for the peace plan.”