Fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine
President Poroshenko calls for truce
KIEV, Ukraine — Russia-backed separatists kept up their assault Sunday on a railway hub in eastern Ukraine, the fiercest battle in fighting that the government said has killed 13 of its troops and wounded 20 others.
The separatists attacked several villages around the town of Debaltseve, a rail link between the two rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk, Security Council spokesman Vladimir Polevoi said. Capturing the town would further consolidate the rebels’ control over eastern Ukraine.
An Associated Press journalist saw more than a dozen Ukrainian tanks and other heavy military vehicles, including a rocket launcher, heading toward Debaltseve on Sunday in an apparent effort to reinforce the government troops.
There was no word on any rebel casualties.
Seeking safety from the intense artillery duel, hundreds of residents have fled the besieged town, which has been without power, water and gas for more than 10 days.
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said around 1,000 of Debaltseve’s residents have been evacuated in the past days.
Vasily Stayetsky, deputy chairman of Ukraine state emergency service, said a projectile crashed Sunday by the town hall, which now serves as a mustering point for those wishing to leave.
“Six people were wounded — three were civilians, one was a soldier, and another two were representatives of the state emergency services,” Stayetsky said.
About 60 Debaltseve residents arrived Sunday in Kiev, the capital, where they took part in a protest outside the Russian Embassy. An adjacent garden was turned into a symbolic cemetery, with wooden crosses erected in memory of the 30 civilians killed by shelling in the southeastern city of Mariupol in late January. Plaques on the crosses said they were “killed by Russian occupiers.”
“Russia is conducting an undeclared war in Ukraine,” said Yevgeny Chebotarev, who met the people arriving by train from Debaltseve and was helping them find shelter. “Today it is obvious that behind the DNR and LNR (the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics) stand Russian troops and Russian weapons, whose victims are Ukrainian civilians.”
Russia denies sending arms and troops to the rebels, who claim to rely solely on military equipment poached from the Ukrainian army. But the separatist forces have deployed vast quantities of powerful weapons, some of which military experts say are not in Ukraine’s arsenal.
In Donetsk, the main rebel-held city, three civilians were killed and four wounded in shelling, the city administration said.
The conflict has claimed more than 5,100 lives and displaced more than 900,000 people since it began in April, according to U.N. estimates.
A month of relative quiet in eastern Ukraine was shattered in early January by full-blown fighting as the separatists attempted to claw back additional territory from the government. Rebel leaders accused Ukraine of mobilizing forces in advance of an offensive.
On Sunday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for a truce.
Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande insisted during a telephone conversation Sunday on “an unconditional and immediate cease-fire as the conflict is escalating and the number of civilian casualties is growing,” according to a statement on the Ukrainian leader’s website.
A Saturday meeting between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Minsk, Belarus, ended after representatives of the two self-proclaimed republics sought a revision of peace accords and were “not even prepared to discuss” a cease-fire, the organization said.
Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko said that the separatists should be encouraged not to block talks and Russia must use its influence on the rebels to this end, according to an emailed statement from Steffen Seibert, a German government spokesman.
The U.S. and European Union have threatened to expand sanctions against Russia for its role in the tensions, adding to restrictions imposed since the March annexation of Crimea and the downing of a Malaysian airliner over Donetsk in July.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will travel to Kiev on Thursday to talk with officials including Poroshenko, State Department spokesman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Friday. Kerry plans to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a security conference in Munich from Friday-Feb. 8, she said. Information for this article was contributed by Yuras Karmanau and Peter Leonard of The Associated Press and by Daryna Krasnolutska, Aliaksandr Kudrytski, Kateryna Choursina, Volodymyr Verbyany, Agnes Lovasz, Misha Savic, Gordana Filipovic, Helene Fouquet and Christoph Rauwald of Bloomberg News.