KIEV, Ukraine — Ukrainian rebels in the Donetsk region said a month-old truce is all but dead and renewed calls for independence as fighting intensified, claiming 10 lives.
“There is no truce, buffer zones are non-existent,” the deputy premier of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Andrei Purgin, said via Russian state news service RIA Novosti.
Purgin said some estimates put the number of deaths from fighting in the Donetsk region alone at 9,000 in the past six months, though the figure is probably closer to 4,000 or 5,000. That compares with a United Nations estimate of 3,660 deaths and 8,756 injuries in all of eastern Ukraine. At least 331 of those fatalities occurred after the belligerents agreed to a cease-fire in Minsk, Belarus, on Sept. 5, the U.N. said yesterday.
“Such casualties make any political union with Ukraine impossible,” Purgin was cited as saying by phone Wednesday.
Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union blame Russia for providing weapons, financing and troops to the separatists, a charge Moscow denies. The two sides have exchanged tit-for-tat sanctions that have depressed economic growth in both the EU and Russia, causing the latter to flirt with a recession.
Purgin said his government is ready to resume peace talks in Minsk once Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe agree on the conditions, according to RIA. The truce accord, signed by representatives of the rebels, Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE, has yet to be fully observed.
While the rebels will continue to fight if government troops seek to oust them from their strongholds, they’re prepared for more peace talks at any time, Purgin told RIA.
“We are not the Taliban and are always ready for negotiations,” Purgin said.
The rebel administration in Donetsk said on its website that it had created its own central bank, without providing details. It earlier said it would allow both Russian rubles and Ukrainian hryvnia to circulate on its territory for “some time to come,” according to the Novorossia news website.
The government in Kiev blamed rebel shelling in Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk for its failure to create the buffer zone stipulated in the Minsk protocol.
Seperatist forces are shelling government troops as many as 50 times a day, mostly near the Donetsk airport and the population centers of Debaltsevo, Luhansk and Mariupol, Defense Minister Valeriy Geletey said in a video briefing Wednesday.
Geletey said Russian troops on Ukrainian territory have enough power to stop the rebels from firing on government troops if the Kremlin has the political will to do so.
“Russian aggression against Ukraine persists,” he said.
Shelling in Donetsk Wednesday resulted in seven civilian deaths, Ivan Prikhodko, the deputy head of the Donetsk Voroshilov district council, said on his Facebeook page.
In Luhansk, rebels attacked Ukrainian positions in the town of Shchastya 20 times, killing three soldiers and wounding five. It was the second time since Oct. 5 that a government halt in shelling went unreciprocated, officials in Kiev said.
“A day of silence announced by the National Security and Defense Council was accompanied by rebel shelling against government troops and cities in the Luhansk region, which resulted in a number of wounded and killed,” Luhansk’s city council said in a statement on its website.
While fighting has ebbed since the cease-fire, skirmishes have continued daily. President Petro Poroshenko said last week that shelling must stop for 24 hours for the government to pull its troops back and create a 30-kilometer (19-mile) buffer zone.
Poroshenko called this week for the OSCE to provide 29 drones and 1,500 observers to monitor the zone around separatist-held areas and Ukraine’s border with Russia.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman and Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin flew to Brussels yesterday to meet with Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fule and other officials. They planned to discuss aid for Ukraine and hold meetings with NATO officials, according to Ukraine’s government.
President Barack Obama has approved more than $46 million of additional defensive security aid for Ukraine, adding to the $70 million announced earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Kiev said on its website yesterday.
The money will be used to provide Ukraine’s military with equipment such as body armor, night-vision goggles, armored sports-utility vehicles and communications equipment.
