Ukraine vows to strike back after rebels kill 23 troops

UKRAINE has vowed to make pro-Russian rebels pay after losing 23 servicemen in clashes across the separatist east — while Russia has proposed a UN resolution demanding a ceasefire to Europe’s deadliest conflict in decades.

The Ukrainian defence ministry said on Friday that the death toll included 19 troops killed by rockets fired from a truck-mounted Grad rocket launcher system — a type of weapon both Kiev and Washington insist could only have been covertly supplied to the rebels by Russia.

The ministry said 93 Ukrainian servicemen had been wounded.

“The rebels will pay for the life of every one of our servicemen with tens and hundreds of their own,” Ukraine’s Western-backed President Petro Poroshenko told an emergency security meeting.

“Not a single terrorist will avoid responsibility,” he said. “Every single one of them will get their just desserts.”

Friday’s official toll is the highest since Poroshenko tore up a brief ceasefire with the rebels on July 1 and relaunched an offensive that managed to dislodge the militias from key eastern strongholds they had held since early April.

The military separately spoke of “eliminating” nearly 100 fighters in one of Ukraine’s bloodiest days since the start of the crisis in November last year, when anti-government protests spiralled into revolution and a protracted standoff with proRussian rebels.

Russia has circulated a proposal for a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire between Kiev and the proMoscow insurgents.

Other elements of the measure would give a greater role to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Russia’s UN ambassador, Vi- taly Churkin, told reporters on Friday.

He said the council “should express deep concern about the increasing number of civilian casualties as a result of intensified combat operations.”

Churkin said Russia would allow monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation to be deployed at two border crossing points on its side of the frontier — a key issue for the West, which claims gunmen and weapons have come into Ukraine from Russia.

“There must be a sustainable ceasefire and then measures on the border and contacts,” said Churkin. “We do not want to see a military escalation. We want de-escalation.”—

Picture: REUTERS WASTELAND: Residents pass buildings damaged by recent shelling in the eastern Ukrainian village of Semenovka. Ukraine has appealed to Western institutions and donors for further cash and credit to rebuild the east, which has been shattered by...