Kiev: Fighting has intensified in eastern Ukraine after the President, Petro Poroshenko, announced an end to a ceasefire and said he was ordering his forces to attack pro-Russian separatists.
In a televised address on Monday night, Poroshenko said the 10-day ceasefire had ended, and vowed that Ukrainian government forces would “attack and liberate our land”.
Clashes were reported around both the Donetsk and Lugansk regions yesterday morning. Four people were killed and five wounded when a small bus came under fire in Kramatorsk, local news outlets reported. Photographs from the scene showed a woman’s body lying in the aisle amid broken glass and blood.
Other images published by InfoResist, an analytical group with close ties to the Kiev government, showed gaping holes and destroyed balconies in several residential buildings in Kramatorsk.
Local resident Alexei Sergeyev said he heard periodic shooting and explosions throughout the night, including near the airfield that Ukrainian forces have been using as a staging ground. Sergeyev said he was fleeing the city yesterday morning along with many other residents.
“Around 8pm they started shooting from something big, maybe a mortar, maybe a tank, and then during the night there was heavy machine gun firing. It was intense, the windows were shaking,” Sergeyev said.
The idea behind the truce — which was announced on June 20 — was to give pro-Russian rebels a chance to disarm and to start a broader peace process including an amnesty and new elections.
But the ceasefire has been repeatedly breached since Poroshenko declared it, with both sides blaming the other. In his address on Monday night, Poroshenko accused the rebels of breaching the ceasefire more than 100 times.
“Peace is, was and will be my goal,” he said. “Only the instruments of achieving it are changing . . . The defence of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, of the security and lives of peaceful citizens, demands not just defensive but offensive action against the terrorist militants.” The Guardian
