The conflict in eastern Ukraine brings new victims

The truce in eastern Ukraine is in jeopardy. Yesterday, the Donetsk City Council confirmed information about at least two deaths per day as a result of artillery shelling. The idea of a political settlement of the conflict through the laws adopted the day before by the Verkhovna Rada on the special status of certain regions of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions is also on the verge of failure. The militias refused to hold elections “at the direction of Kyiv,” and the Batkivshchyna party promised to prove the unconstitutionality of the initiatives promoted by President Petro Poroshenko.

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Right Sector activists accuse the authorities of “betraying national interests” and excessive concessions to “Donbass separatists”

Photo: Kommersant / Ivan Kovalenko / buy photo

“Fierce fighting” in the area of the airport was reported yesterday by the Donetsk City Council. “As a result of the fighting, the infrastructure of the Kiev region was again severely damaged. Fires broke out at the sites where the shells hit (the shells —Kommersant ). The blast wave knocked out some of the windows in the houses,” the city council said in a statement. According to city authorities, two civilians became victims of artillery shelling during the day, and several more people were injured.

The militias blame Ukrainian security forces for the shelling. First Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic Andrei Purgin is confident that the turning point came on Monday, when “something huge fell on the bus station in Khartsyzsk.” After this, as he told RIA Novosti, the Ukrainian military again began to use heavy weapons.

In turn, the Ukrainian authorities hold the militias responsible for violating the truce. At the same time, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk yesterday, in fact, did not rule out the possibility of Kyiv’s unilateral refusal to comply with the Minsk agreements. According to him, Ukraine needs peace, but it is necessary to calculate the course of events several steps ahead. “There is no trust, especially in the Russians. Therefore, we will see how the so-called peace agreements will be implemented further,” the prime minister said, calling on the security forces to remain in “full combat readiness.” Presidential Advisor Nikolai Tomenko said yesterday that Kyiv does not intend to stop the military operation, the total costs of which are approaching $5 billion.

Nevertheless, Ukrainian political scientist Dmitry Dzhangirov is confident: fatigue from the conflict is accumulating, so that “in the east, most likely, a shaky, broken truce will be established, which will be beneficial for all parties to the conflict to consider peace.” At the same time, the expert is confident: “The shelling will stop only if the principle of separating the warring parties is implemented, separating them to a certain distance. Now in many places there is no direct front line, and everyone quite freely interprets where to stand. To establish peace, it must be spelled out in the documents line of separation, which may include enclaves, although this is highly undesirable."

The absence of such a “line of separation” is not the only problem. The law approved the day before by the Rada on the special status of certain districts of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, among other things providing for the holding of early local elections there, did not find support either among the militias or among representatives of a number of political forces in Ukraine. The first said: Kyiv cannot decide when and what kind of elections to hold in territory not under its control. They were not satisfied with yesterday's explanation from the Ukrainian Presidential Commissioner for Conflict Resolution Irina Gerashchenko: “The law provides for the gradual return of disputed territories to the control of the Ukrainian authorities and the complete restoration of sovereignty there.”

Representatives of the Ukrainian “war party” also expressed dissatisfaction with the president’s initiative yesterday. The leader of Batkivshchyna, Yulia Tymoshenko, announced her intention to prove in the constitutional court the inconsistency of the norms approved by the Rada with the basic law of the country. Right Sector activists, who together with the Automaidan movement held a rally near the presidential administration building, also agree with this position. The protest almost escalated into full-scale clashes: accusing the authorities of “capitulation to the aggressor” and “betrayal of national interests,” several hundred radicals threw firecrackers and smoke bombs at the police.

Pavel Tarasenko; Yanina Sokolovskaya, Kyiv

The truce came under artillery fire