Photo: EPA

Active hostilities have resumed in southeastern Ukraine. If on Sunday the militia attacked the Donetsk airport, then the next day clashes began in the vicinity of Mariupol, representatives of the Kyiv military say. The leadership of Ukraine, Russia and the self-proclaimed republics declare their readiness for negotiations, but the date for new consultations in the Minsk format has not been set.

Fights for the airport

On Monday, according to the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, there was relative calm in the area of Donetsk airport, where the Ukrainian military carried out a massive operation on Sunday. However, in general, the situation in the southeast tended to worsen, National Security and Defense Council representative Alexander Lysenko said at a briefing in Kyiv. Over the past 24 hours, three Ukrainian servicemen were killed and 66 were wounded, he said. The militia killed nine people and injured 44 people, Eduard Basurin, deputy commander of the headquarters of the DPR Ministry of Defense, told reporters in Donetsk. According to him, the DPR forces destroyed 27 tanks and 20 armored combat vehicles of the enemy, the losses of the Ukrainian troops in manpower amounted to more than 200 military personnel killed and about 300 wounded, Basurin said. The militia, according to him, lost 16 people killed and 62 wounded. Official Kyiv does not confirm this number of losses.

The Ukrainian side decided to switch to hostilities after the massive shelling of the Donetsk airport, the country's President Petro Poroshenko said on Monday. In recent days, the intensity of attacks on the airport held by Ukrainian security forces since the beginning of the armed conflict has sharply increased, so on Saturday he ordered a one-time response, he said at a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz in Kyiv. In general, according to the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, a significant escalation of tension began on January 7, the number of shelling by militias towards the Ukrainian military increased from 10 to 90-100 per day, although on December 9 Kyiv declared a regime of silence.

The ownership of the airport is disputed by both sides. The result of the operation at the Donetsk airport was its return to the control of the Ukrainian military, Reuters reports citing Lysenko. Adviser to the Ukrainian President Yuriy Biryukov, who on Sunday announced the start of the operation in the airport area, also reported on Facebook about the evacuation of the wounded and the partial rotation of the Ukrainian military. The next day, Biryukov reported that part of the second floor of the new terminal had collapsed, having been “undermined by the separatists.” “The debris also fell on the fighters. There are many wounded,” he wrote. However, at the same time, Basurin indicated in his statement that the Donetsk airport remains under the control of the militias.

Kyiv insists that the Donetsk airport, according to the Minsk peace plan, should remain with Ukraine, Lysenko said. However, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday that the airport in Donetsk, in accordance with the Minsk agreements, should be transferred to the control of the militias. The issue, as reported in a statement by the diplomatic department, could not be resolved for a long time due to disputes over some other sections of the contact line. All this time, Ukrainian security forces continued to shell both Donetsk and other populated areas from their positions at the airport, and in order to suppress these criminal actions, DPR forces took control of the airport. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on Sunday advised Moscow to “leave stories about the capture of the airport for internal propaganda.”

Clashes along the contact line

According to the Ukrainian side and Mariupol media, on Monday the militia also became more active in the Mariupol direction and in the area of the village of Krymskoye, Lugansk region. In the Mariupol area, four Ukrainian servicemen were wounded as a result of shelling by militias on Monday, the public organization “Defense of Mariupol” reported. The positions of Ukrainian security forces were fired from mortars, artillery, anti-tank systems and automatic grenade launchers, according to a message on the organization’s Facebook page.

According to the Novorossiya news agency, the Ukrainian military, in turn, shelled Donetsk, which led to destruction on the territory of city hospital No. 3 and the injury of one of its doctors. On Sunday, the head of the coordination group of the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire on the Russian side, Colonel of the Russian Armed Forces Andrei Kozlov, said that the Ukrainian army used bomber aircraft when shelling Donetsk and Gorlovka. According to the militia, 30 civilians were killed in Gorlovka as a result of shelling. However, Lysenko denied these claims on Monday.

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The NSDC representative also said that two battalion-tactical groups of the Russian Armed Forces crossed the border between Russia and Ukraine. “The Russian invaders will face inevitable defeat, because they have no idea what they are dying for,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Yevgeniy Perebiynis responded on Twitter. Basurin denied this: “Which Russian Armed Forces are on our side? Definitely not!” (quote from RIA Novosti).

Diplomatic shootout

During negotiations with the Polish Prime Minister, Poroshenko reiterated Kyiv’s commitment to the Minsk agreements and the readiness of Kyiv’s representative to take part in a meeting of the contact group on Ukraine at any time. A new date for the meeting of the group, which managed to agree on the Minsk settlement principles in September, was not announced on Monday. LPR representative Vladislav Dainego said that he was ready to fly to the Belarusian capital at any time. Denis Pushilin, representing the DPR at the negotiations, also expressed his readiness to take part in the meeting, but said that representatives of the self-proclaimed republics need guarantees that the meeting will take place - on Friday they already came to Minsk, but ex-President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, representing Kyiv at the negotiations, is there and didn't show up.

On Sunday, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that President Poroshenko had rejected a peace proposal from Russian President Vladimir Putin. It asked the conflicting parties to stop mutual shelling and withdraw artillery with a caliber of over 100 mm to the range established by the Minsk Memorandum of September 19, 2014. Instead, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on the same day calling on Russia to sign the schedule for implementing the provisions of the Minsk Memorandum, agreed upon on November 13. The document was previously agreed upon with Moscow, but the Russian side soon withdrew its signature. Putin’s proposals for the withdrawal of heavy weapons are similar to those included in the schedule of November 13, the Russian Foreign Ministry responded the next day.

If Kyiv is interested in the withdrawal of weapons, it must immediately begin practical actions on the ground, especially since the leaders of the DPR and LPR have already signed the agreed schedule, Kiev must also give its representative in the Joint Center the necessary powers, the Russian department said in a statement.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin linked the meeting of the contact group this week with Kyiv’s readiness for negotiations, which, according to him, is not yet visible.

For Kyiv, the resumption of active fighting was a test of strength; they used the respite to regroup and pull up equipment and believed that they could turn the situation in their favor, but this did not work out, says Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Institute of CIS Countries. This forces Poroshenko to now remember all possible negotiation formats, he is sure. Zharikhin does not see any logic in Kyiv’s actions, which may indicate that he is receiving conflicting signals: Russia and Europe are in favor of continuing negotiations, the United States is taking a more militant position, Poroshenko’s trip to Davos is unlikely to bring clarity, since both European and American politicians, continues Zharikhin.

Russia, according to Zharikhin, with all the talk about changing the constitution in Ukraine and federalization, is now striving to freeze the situation, and therefore does not dot the i’s on controversial issues. The current aggravation is explained by the desire of the Russian side to secure the strongest negotiating positions, given the weakening of the Russian economy, Moscow has no reserves to prolong the conflict, so it was decided to go on the offensive at this stage, Ukrainian political scientist Vladimir Tsibulko disagrees.

Putin’s peacemaking proposals were rejected by Kiev in order to present Russia as a party to the conflict, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, wrote in a blog. He explains the refusal of the truce by internal political contradictions in Ukraine: any truce on the line of confrontation and the effectiveness of the Minsk agreements exacerbate internal problems in Kyiv, increase the population’s dissatisfaction with the situation in the country and claims against the authorities. Violation of the truce is beneficial to forces that want to disrupt the process of restoring trust between Russia and Western countries, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on CIS Affairs Leonid Slutsky told reporters.

Suspicions that Russia is interested in creating a frozen conflict in the Donbass are confirmed, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomir Zaoralek told reporters in Brussels before a meeting of EU foreign ministers. Foreign ministers yesterday did not decide on sanctions against Russia.

The war has returned to Donbass