Russia blamed for bomb attack
DONETSK, Ukraine — Kyiv accused Moscow of sponsoring a terrorist attack on a peace march in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv on Sunday that left two dead and at least 10 wounded.
In the deadliest blast of a bombing campaign by proRussian separatists, an explosive device was thrown from a car toward marchers who were commemorating the deaths of more than 100 protesters in last year’s revolution.
Amateur video footage posted on YouTube showed people scattering after the blast, while two marchers in camouflage shouted for a doctor to assist a man lying on the ground.
Ukrainian authorities said they had arrested four suspects shortly after the attack, claiming that the men had received training in a Russian city just across the border.
“They are Ukrainian citizens, who underwent instruction and received weapons in the Russian Federation, in Belgorod,” said Markian Lubkivskyi, an aide to the head of the Ukrainian security agency, the SBU.
The blast was the latest in several months of bomb attacks on targets in government-held cities including Kharkiv, Odessa, Mariupol and Kyiv.
Previous bombings tended to avoid casualties, targeting the offices of pro-Kyiv groups or infrastructure at night. Before Sunday, the bloodiest attack had been the bombing of a bar in Kharkiv that injured 11 people in November.
Kharkiv is 225 kilometres from the conflict zone but is considered by pro-Russian separatists to be part of Novorossia, a historic term for lands annexed by Moscow in the 18th century on which the rebels base their territorial ambitions.
It was the scene of violent pro-Russian protests in spring last year, but an attempt to set up a breakaway “People’s Republic” like those established in Luhansk and Donetsk lasted just hours before being put down by police.
It is now firmly under government control and its many arms factories play a key role in the Ukrainian war effort.
Earlier in the day Russian-separatists announced that they would pull back heavy weapons in accordance with the Minsk peace accords, raising hopes that some kind of truce could be salvaged despite the failure of a week-old ceasefire to end fighting. “The plan was signed last night ... Starting from today there are two weeks to withdraw heavy weapons,” said Eduard Basurin, the deputy defence minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The announcement followed the first exchange of prisoners under the Feb. 12 peace agreement. The prisoner exchange and artillery withdrawal were seen as a sign that the separatists intend to more fully abide by the truce after achieving a military victory in Debaltseve last week.
The Russian-backed side’s decision to continue the assault on Debaltseve in defiance of the ceasefire was condemned by the United States and threatened to destroy the Minsk peace agreement for good.