DONETSK, Ukraine: Pro-Russian rebels defiantly announced yesterday they would stage their own elections in November, raising the stakes in a standoff with Kiev despite both sides moving to end five months of deadly fighting.
The prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, said the eastern separatist region would hold elections to choose a parliament and a leader on November 2.
The chairman of the “Supreme Soviet”, or parliament, in the neighbouring Lugansk People’s Republic, Alexei Karyakin, told the TASS news agency that the region would hold polls on the same day.
The surprise announcements came just hours after Zakharchenko told the Interfax news agency the insurgents were withdrawing their big guns from the frontline under a peace plan forged with Kiev aimed at ending a conflict that has killed around 3,000 people.
Journalists said they saw tanks moving back from an area near Donetsk — the main rebel stronghold in the industrial east — although fighting was reported around the city’s airport in the morning. “We have withdrawn artillery but only in those areas where the Ukrainian regular units have done the same,” Zakharchenko said. “Where Ukraine hasn’t withdrawn artillery, we haven’t done so.”
Ukraine had said on Monday it was starting a pullback under the terms of the deal signed in Minsk on Saturday that calls for both sides to withdraw from the frontline and establish a 30km wide demilitarised zone.
The separatists launched their uprising against Kiev in April, seizing towns and cities across the eastern rustbelt and holding disputed independence referendums in May for Donetsk and Lugansk.
Across both Donetsk and Lugansk, the level of violence appears to have subsided after months of warfare that sent East-West tensions soaring.
But journalists said Donetsk airport, a key battleground in the conflict, was hit by heavy artillery yesterday morning, sending flames and large clouds of black smoke shooting into the sky.
Donetsk city hall said a civilian was killed overnight, bringing to 40 the number of Ukrainian troops and civilians killed since an initial September 5 truce that was also signed in the Belarussian capital.
“Not everything’s clear with the ceasefire,” Zakharchenko said. “Firing from the Ukrainian side is still going on as before. I would call this a slow-moving military operation.”
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko agreed to the peace plan after several rounds of talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, who is blamed by Kiev and the West for fomenting the rebellion by sending in elite troops and heavy weapons.
The war “cannot be won by military means alone,” Poroshenko said on Sunday, while warning that Ukraine would defend itself with renewed vigour should the truce collapse.
Kiev signed up to the deal after the rebels — apparently with Russian military backing — swept across the southeast of Ukraine, delivering a series of battlefield defeats to government.
AFP
