[h=1]Biden calls Ukraine leader, offers condolences[/h]
Washington (AFP) - US Vice President Joe Biden called Ukraine's leader Petro Poroshenko Saturday and offered condolences for the deaths of soldiers facing off with pro-Russian militants in the country's east.


Separatists killed 19 troops in a hail of heavy rocket fire on Friday near the Russian border in a bloody reminder of their resolve to reverse the recent tide of government gains across the region.


The military said four other soldiers died elsewhere on Friday and seven more were killed overnight in attacks that also wounded more than 120 soldiers.


During the call, "President Poroshenko informed the Vice President about the latest separatist attacks using heavy weapons on Ukrainian forces and the Vice President expressed his condolences for the loss of life," the White House said.


Biden expressed support for Poroshenko's efforts to convene a meeting to discuss a possible ceasefire with the separatists, as the Western backed leader's top aide said all talks with the rebels were off and that the only possible side that could be involved in negotiations was Russian President Vladimir Putin.


Biden also told Poroshenko of "ongoing US diplomatic efforts to work with our international partners to impose costs on Russia if it continues on its current course of providing the separatists with heavy weapons and equipment."


The White House released details of the call just hours after the Brazilian government said Poroshenko had accepted an invitation to attend Sunday's World Cup football final in Rio de Janeiro, where Putin will also be present.


VP Biden calls and not the President? Figures, he is a craven coward who cannot even stand to make a sympathy call due to the chaos in Ukraine being due to his incompetence from the start.

 

[h=1]Russia threatens Ukraine after shell crosses border[/h]
DONETSK Ukraine/MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia threatened Ukraine on Sunday with "irreversible consequences" after a man was killed by a shell fired across the border from Ukraine, an incident Moscow described in warlike terms as aggression that must be met with a response.

Although both sides have reported cross-border shootings in the past, it appears to be the first time Moscow has reported fatalities on its side of the border in the three-month conflict which has killed hundreds of people in Ukraine.


Kiev called the accusation its forces had fired across the border "total nonsense" and suggested the attack could have been the work of rebels trying to provoke Moscow to intervene on their behalf. The rebels denied they were responsible.


Inside Ukraine, combat has intensified dramatically since a rebel missile attack that killed dozens of government troops on Friday. Local officials said on Sunday 18 people were killed in shooting incidents in the two main rebel-held cities.


Russia's Interfax news agency said fierce fighting had broken out on the outskirts of rebel-controlled Luhansk, a city near the border with Russia, and the Ukrainian army had attacked with a force of 70 tanks.


Kiev said it had bombarded a convoy of 100 armored vehicles and trucks that had crossed into Ukraine carrying in rebel fighters from Russia. It also said seven of its troops had been killed in attacks.


Moscow's bellicose response to the cross-border shelling raises the renewed prospect of overt Russian intervention, after weeks in which President Vladimir Putin had appeared intent on disengaging, pulling back tens of thousands of troops he had massed at the frontier.


Russia sent Ukraine a note of protest describing the incident as "an aggressive act by the Ukrainian side against sovereign Russian territory and the citizens of the Russian Federation," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement warning of "irreversible consequences".


"This represents a qualitative escalation of the danger to our citizens, now even on our own territory. Of course this naturally cannot pass without a response," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin told Rossiya-24 state TV.


View gallery



An engine of Grad missile system is seen in a destroyed flat after shelling in Maryinka village outs …



Russia's Investigative Committee said a shell had landed in the yard of a house in a small town on the Russian side of the frontier, killing a man and wounding a woman. The Russian town is called Donetsk, sharing the name of the Ukrainian city of 1 million people that the rebels have declared capital of an independent "people's republic".


"TOTAL NONSENSE"



Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, said reports that Ukrainian forces were responsible were "total nonsense and the information is untrue".


"The forces of the anti-terrorist operation do not fire on the territory of a neighboring country and they do not fire on residential areas," he said. "We have many examples of terrorists carrying out provocation shooting, including into Russian territory, and then accusing Ukrainian forces of it."


The rebels denied blame. Interfax news agency quoted the rebels' self-proclaimed first deputy prime minister, Andrey Prugin, as saying he was "90 percent certain" it was Ukrainian troops that had fired across the border, because the rebels were short on ammunition and cautious about where they fired.


The conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in April when armed pro-Russian fighters seized towns and government buildings, weeks after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in response to the overthrow of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev.


The fighting has escalated sharply in recent days after Ukrainian forces pushed the rebels out of their most heavily-fortified bastion, the town of Slaviansk.


Hundreds of rebels, led by a self-proclaimed defense minister from Moscow, have retreated to the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, built reinforcements and pledged to make a stand. The once-bustling city has been emptying in fear of a battle. "Everybody here is sitting on a suitcase. People are only prevented from leaving by work - that is if they have any work. If they (the Ukrainian forces) are going to bomb then I shall, of course, go too," said Olga, 35. On the streets there are fewer and fewer cars. Some drivers no longer bother to stop at red lights since there are no police around and few vehicles. Rebel fighters vowed to fight to the end if the army comes.


"We are ready for them. We will not leave. Let women and children leave. But I don't care much for grown men going. They are cowards, rascals, scum," said a man named Lis, who described himself as an officer in the Vostok battalion, a rebel force.


Kiev says Moscow has provoked the rebellion and allowed fighters and heavy weapons to cross the border with impunity. It has struggled to reassert control over the eastern frontier, recapturing border positions from rebels.


The past two days have seen an escalation in retaliation after dozens of Ukrainian troops were killed in a rocket attack on a base near the border on Friday. Kiev said it killed hundreds of rebels in air strikes on Saturday, although there was no independent confirmation of such high casualties and the rebels denied suffering serious losses.


Ukrainian security spokesman Lysenko said on Sunday forces had used artillery to strike a convoy of about 100 armored vehicles and trucks after confirming that the convoy was carrying "a large number of recruits" into Ukraine from Russia.


He said seven Ukrainian service members had died in attacks in the east in the past day.


The Donetsk city council said in a statement on its web site on Sunday that 12 people had been killed at a mining settlement near the Ukrainian city. It gave no details of who had fired. Municipal authorities in Luhansk, capital of the other rebellious eastern province, said six people were killed in clashes there. It also gave no details of who was to blame.


Western countries have threatened to impose harsh economic sanctions on Moscow if it intervenes openly. Russia denies fuelling the conflict, but Kiev and Western countries say it has supported the rebels.


In Kiev, President Petro Poroshenko's office said he had turned down an invitation to attend the World Cup soccer final in Brazil because of the situation in Ukraine.

 

[h=1]Merkel and Putin call for stronger peace effort in Ukraine: Kremlin[/h]
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin, meeting briefly on Sunday before the World Cup soccer final in Brazil, called for a stepping-up of peace efforts in Ukraine, Putin's spokesman said.
The pair have been in regular telephone contact over the Ukraine crisis, with Merkel urging Putin to use his influence with pro-Russian separatists to help bring about an end to fighting in the east of the former Soviet republic in which hundreds of people have been killed.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Merkel and the Kremlin leader agreed the situation 'has a tendency toward degradation'.
"Both Putin and Merkel stressed the necessity to urgently resume the work of a contact group on Ukraine, possibly in the format of a video conference. It is their common opinion that, in order for the contact group to resume its work, a ceasefire needs to be declared as soon as possible," Peskov said.
A separate statement released by Merkel's office said effective controls along Russia's border with Ukraine and an exchange of prisoners were key prerequisites for a ceasefire.

 

[h=1]Donetsk: a ghost town waiting for Ukraine's final battle[/h]

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Donetsk, one of the last bastions of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine, has become a ghost town as residents clog the roads and railway stations in a desperate scramble to escape advancing government troops.





The self-proclaimed prime minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, Oleksandr Borodai, claims more than 70,000 of the city's 900,000 inhabitants have already fled as Kiev's forces move within 20 kilometres (12 miles) of the city.


Every train was full on Friday as residents calmly joined long queues to buy tickets.


"I have lived here more than 40 years and it is very difficult for me to leave this town. But there is no other solution," says Natalia, who was catching a train to Dnipropetrovsk, 250 kilometres west, from where she plans to cross the border into Russia.


She is fleeing after months of daily "bombardments" by Ukrainian government planes, which have laid seige to the separatist stronghold.


"The planes fly near my house permanently and fire on the town," she says.





Watching over a pile of bags, a man in his fifties prepared to join his parents in Russia with his daughters and grandchildren.


"Everything is shutting down," says the man, who did not give his name. "There is nothing to do here. No work -- and it is getting too dangerous."


Stall-keepers and shoppers at a small market outside the station jump at the sound of artillery fire that breaks out sporadically a few kilometres away at the airport, where the separatists and government forces are vying for control.


"It is very scary," says Yaroslava, who runs a stall selling sunglasses. "But we do not want to leave. We just want to survive and to no longer be bombarded."


The exodus from Donetsk is also taking place by road.

"I would say that one car in five is filled with refugees," says a young separatist volunteer manning a roadblock around 20 kilometres east of the city.


"But me, I'm not going anywhere. My mother and my two grandmothers are buried here, so I will fight, even though I have sent my wife to Russia."


Minibuses and trams are still operating in the city, but cars and pedestrians are sparse. There are hardly any cafes or restaurants open, and those that are hurry to close up before nightfall.


Only food stores appear to be functioning normally. Banks and any shops that could be pillaged have shut long ago.



Rumours of imminent clashes and military offences are rife, echoing around social media and increasing hopes and tensions throughout the city.


Ukraine's military says it controls all routes in and out of Donetsk and have vowed reprisals after 30 government troops were killed by defiant rebels in the past 48 hours.


On the outskirts of the city, the rebels manning the roadblocks are on high alert. Some passers-by offer them packets of cigarettes or biscuits.


The Vostok (East) Battalion is in charge of one barricade. One of the most professional and organised of the rebel units, they have vowed to "defend the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic" and "reclaim our land".


That means sacrifices, said one rebel. Still, he predicts "we will have time to watch the football final on Sunday," referring to the World Cup final between Argentina and Germany.

 

[h=1]Russia warns Ukraine of ‘irreversible consequences’ after cross-border shelling[/h]
MOSCOW— Russia on Sunday accused Ukraine of lobbing a shell over the border and killing a Russian civilian and warned of “irreversible consequences,” in a sharp escalation of rhetoric that raised fears of a Russian invasion in Ukraine’s east.


The accusation, which Ukrainian officials denied, set off furious denunciations in Russia, with one senior legislator calling for pinpoint airstrikes on Ukrainian soil of the sort he said Israel was making in the Gaza Strip.


Ukrainian security officials, meanwhile, said that about 100 military vehicles driven by “mercenaries” had attempted to cross the border from Russia early Sunday, and that Ukraine’s military had destroyed some of the vehicles.


Russian officials summoned the Ukrainian charge d’affaires to the Foreign Ministry in Moscow to protest the civilian’s death. The Russians say it occurred when the Ukrainian army shelled Russia’s Rostov region, hitting a residential building. Two other people were injured, authorities said.


“We need to use precision weapons, like Israel’s, to destroy those who launched the bomb,” the deputy speaker of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Yevgeny Bushmin, told the state-run RIA Novosti news service.


Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the incident was an “aggressive action” that “highlights the extremely dangerous escalation of tensions on the Russian-Ukrainian border and may have irreversible consequences, the responsibility for which lies on the Ukrainian side.”


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said last week that his nation was prepared to take all necessary steps to defend its territory — a declaration that appeared to keep open the option of outright intervention in Ukraine. Ukrainian and Western officials have accused Russia of offering quiet support to the rebels, a charge that rebels themselves appeared to confirm this past week, although the extent of the aid is unclear.


Ukrainian officials denied that they fired onto Russian soil, saying that the attack may have been the work of provocateurs seeking to draw a Russian reaction.


“Forces of the anti-terrorist mission are not firing on the territory of a neighboring country,” Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told a news conference in Kiev on Sunday.


But he told journalists that there had been shelling in the area early Sunday coming from both rebel and Ukrainian army positions. Pro-Russian separatists made a “massive artillery strike” on Ukrainian military forces in Luhansk, just across the border checkpoint from where the shelling death is alleged to have taken place, he said.


He added that the strike served as cover for “the passage of a major mercenary force into Ukrainian territory” of “around 100 units of armed vehicles and trucks.” Once the column of vehicles was discovered, Ukrainian artillery positions fired on them, he said. Ukrainian officials said they were still working to determine further details about the incident.


It was not immediately possible to confirm either side’s account, and Ukrainian officials did not have an explanation for why, in the fog of war, they could be certain that a stray shell had not hit the Russian side. Russian officials also offered no evidence that the shell was indeed of Ukrainian military provenance.


The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Sunday that the country was “ready to cooperate” in any Russian investigation of the incident, and in a statement it “expressed regret at the deaths and injuries” of the Russian citizens.


But the Russian warnings of consequences for the reported shelling raised tensions. Ukrainian television channels, including Channel 5, which is owned by President Petro Poroshenko, repeatedly played videos of tanks flying Russian flags rolling through what they said was easternmost Ukraine early Sunday. Many Ukrainians on social networks noted darkly that when Russian troops rolled into Georgia in August 2008, Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, was in Beijing for the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics; Putin, now president, was in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday for the World Cup final.


Poroshenko late Sunday urged the European Union to investigate what he said was a border incursion by “heavy military equipment” and attacks from Russian military positions on Ukrainian troop positions, his office said in a statement.


Flashpoint at the border



Since pro-Russian separatists started seizing territory in April, Ukraine has struggled to maintain control of its porous border, and separatists have taken over several border checkpoints. Ukrainian officials say that the Russian government has tolerated the passage of a steady stream of military equipment and volunteers to assist
the separatists’ fight, a charge that Russia has denied.


Russia has been registering increasingly strong complaints that its border crossings and territory are being shelled from the Ukrainian side, although Sunday was the first time that it said that anyone had died as a result.


Putin on Sunday said that “incidents where shells reach Russian territory, leading to today’s tragedy in the Rostov region, are unacceptable,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry

Peskov told reporters in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday after the Russian leader met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Interfax news agency reported.


Putin called for a return to the negotiating table to find a settlement in a format that includes the rebels, Peskov said. Negotiators met twice last month during a cease-fire that later lapsed amid charges of violations on both sides.


The rebels made a significant retreat on July 5, pulling back from the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk and fortifying themselves inside the far larger city of Donetsk. Since then, fierce fighting has taken place in Ukraine’s east.


On Sunday, Ukrainian government forces were engaged in a major assault on the rebel-held eastern city of Luhansk, and separatist officials said that the military appeared to be gaining territory.


“They have lost their limits,” said a Donetsk rebel leader, Igor Girkin, also known as Igor Strelkov, in an interview with the Russian LifeNews television channel. “They are ready to do everything, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they use any available means they have for war.”


Russia has not openly responded to direct appeals for aid from the rebels since the retreat. But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said Sunday that the shelling incident “will not be left without a reaction.” He called for “an immediate end to the bloodshed” in Ukraine.



Birnbaum reported from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

 

[h=1]Fierce fighting near rebel-held city in Ukraine[/h]

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Fighting intensified Monday around the eastern Ukrainian city of Luhansk as government forces stepped up efforts to disrupt rebel lines and reclaim more territory from the faltering insurgency. One resident said panic was gripping the city.





In the last two weeks, the government has halved the territory held by pro-Russia separatists, who have been forced back into strongholds around the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. Those two mostly Russian-speaking regions have declared independence from the government in Kiev.


Despite reports of military successes, however, Ukraine's president announced he has more evidence that Russia has directly supported a separatist insurgency against his government that is dragging into its fourth month.


The Defense Ministry said Monday that government troops had retaken several villages around the rebel-controlled city of Luhansk and had reopened a corridor to its civilian airport.


"Due to successful offensives by forces in the Donetsk region, some militants are trying to leave the city," the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Rebels, however, insisted their fighting capabilities remain strong.



A spokeswoman for the separatist Luhansk People's Republic told The Associated Press that they destroyed a Ukrainian armed convoy in the village of Heorhiivka, 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of the airport. She says at least three Ukrainian soldiers were killed in that clash.


Government defense officials said their troops have taken control of several areas on the fringe of Luhansk — including Metalist, Oleksandrivsk, Bile and Rozkishne.

\Those residential areas are north, west and south of the city, suggesting the government's plan to form a security cordon around Luhansk has yielded results.


The leader of the military wing of the insurgency, Igor Girkin, also known by his nom de guerre Strelkov, had over the weekend predicted a bitter fight for Luhansk, a city of 400,000, and estimated that Ukrainian forces had deployed up to 70 tanks in the offensive.


One Luhansk resident, Sergei, who declined to give his last name due to fears of reprisal, told The Associated Press that panic had gripped the city Monday due to reports that Ukrainian paratroopers were intermittently entering the city center and detaining rebel fighters.


Exit points from the city have been blocked and militiamen are confiscating cars and belongings from residents attempting to flee, he said.


The Defense Ministry also said rebels were routinely commandeering cars from civilians in the separatist areas, but it was not immediately possible to confirm those claims.


The government in Kiev has insisted that that the separatists are receiving substantial manpower and military equipment from Russia, a charge Russia has always denied.


"In the last three days, Ukraine's armed forces have been attacked with Russian multiple-rocket launchers," President Petro Poroshenko said Monday at a meeting of his security officials.


Poroshenko also said there's evidence that officers with Russian army have been involved in the hostilities but he did not elaborate.

 

[h=1]Moscow 'considering targeted strikes' on Ukraine[/h]
Moscow (AFP) - Moscow is considering targeted strikes against Ukraine after a shell reportedly crossed the border and killed a Russian civilian, the Kommersant daily reported Monday, citing a source close to the Kremlin.
The respected daily quoted a source as saying that Moscow was considering the possibility of "targeted retaliatory strikes" against Ukraine, where escalating clashes between pro-Moscow rebels and government troops threatened to spiral into an all-out civil war over the weekend.
"Our patience is not limitless," the source was quoted as saying, adding that Russia "knows exactly where they (Ukrainians) are firing from."
The source said that Russia was not considering any large-scale action, but only targeted one-off strikes on positions from which fire is directed at Russian territory.
Moscow said Sunday that a Ukrainian shell had landed in Russia and killed a civilian, prompting the Russian foreign ministry to say that the incident was "another act of aggression" that could have "irreversible consequences."
Ukraine denied the claim, saying that government forces "had never before, are not now, and never will fire on the territory of a neighbouring state".
Several shells landed early Sunday in the small Russian border town of Donetsk, which has the same name as rebels' stronghold city in eastern Ukraine, killing one resident and wounding two.
The deputy speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament, Yevgeny Bushmin, said Sunday: "We need to use targeted weapons, like Israel does among others, to destroy those who launched this mine."

 

[h=1]Ukraine's president says Russian officers fight alongside rebels[/h]
KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russian military staff officers on Monday of fighting alongside separatists in the east of the country and said a newly-developed Russian missile system was being used against government forces.





Poroshenko was speaking at an emergency meeting of his security chiefs after a weekend of Ukrainian air strikes on rebel positions near the border with Russia and charges by Moscow that Kiev killed a Russian man with a cross-border shell.


The war of words between Kiev and Moscow and the intense fighting, in which Ukrainian forces say they inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, marks a sharp escalation in the three-month conflict in which several hundred Ukrainian servicemen, civilians and rebels have been killed.


"Information has ... been confirmed that Russian staff officers are taking part in military operations against Ukrainian forces," Poroshenko said, adding to his charges on Sunday of movements of heavy military equipment into the country from Russia.


He said Ukrainian forces were now coming under attack from a new Russian missile system and that Ukrainian forces would have change tactics on the border, though he gave no details.


Earlier on Monday, a military spokesman in Kiev said Russia was building up forces on its border with Ukraine, and separatists, backed by Russian "mercenaries", were firing on Ukrainian border guards in an attempt to bring armoured vehicles into the country.


Accusing Russia of embarking on a course of escalation in Ukraine's eastern regions, National and Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists:


"In the past 24 hours, deployment of (Russian) units and military equipment across the border from the Sumy and Luhansk border points was noticed. The Russian Federation continues to build up troops on the border."


In the early hours of Monday, separatists had fired on border guards and the armed forces near the border settlement of Dyakove, one of several attacks on border guards as "terrorists and Russian mercenaries" tried to bring in armoured vehicles and equipment, he said.


Lysenko accused rebel fighters of being behind the cross-border shelling of a Russian residential area in which a Russian man was killed on Sunday and which Moscow says was the work of Ukrainian forces.


"The (rebel) fighters systematically fire mortar and shoot into Russian territory which killed a Russian citizen," Lysenko said.

 

Moscow (AFP) - Russian state television has provoked a storm of criticism after it aired an uncorroborated report claiming that the Ukrainian army publicly nailed a three-year-old boy to a board in a former rebel stronghold.





Ukraine accused Russia of ratcheting up its propaganda war by airing an interview in which a woman gave graphic details of the alleged incident in the Ukrainian flashpoint city of Slavyansk, which neither AFP nor other media have been able to confirm.


Channel One television at the weekend broadcast footage of a woman who said she recently saw Ukrainian soldiers round up people in central Slavyansk, which the army took over this month after three months of clashes with separatists, and nail an insurgent's child to a notice board.


A spokeswoman for Ukraine's interior ministry, Natalya Stativko, on Monday slammed the report as "following in the footsteps of Goebbels," Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda.


"The cruder and the more monstrous the lie, the better it will look for the Russian propaganda machine," Stativko told AFP.


Galina Timchenko, former editor of Lenta.ru, a prominent news portal in Moscow, said the report was a gross breach of professional ethics by one of Russia's most watched channels.


"This is an egregious violation of professional ethics," she told AFP.


"Not only is there no proof anywhere -- this is not even being questioned."


Opposition leader Alexei Navalny denounced the channel as "nutty" for airing the report.


"Are they completely sick to be concocting this?" he wrote on his blog. "The people behind this are a danger to society and what they are doing is a true crime."


Representatives of Channel One declined immediate comment.


The report featured a woman named as Galina Pyshnyak, who was interviewed at a refugee camp in Russia, describing the incident that she labelled an act of revenge.


"They gathered women on the square because there are no more men. Women, girls, old people," Pyshnyak said.


"They took a child of around three years old, a little boy in his underwear and a T-shirt and nailed him to a notice board like Jesus. One was nailing him and two others holding him."


Russian official rhetoric often compares events in Ukraine to Nazi Germany and calls the pro-Western Kiev government a "fascist junta".

 

[h=1]Ukraine military plane shot down as fighting rages[/h]

Ukrainian military transport aircraft has been shot down in the east, amid fighting with pro-Russian separatist rebels, Ukrainian officials say.

They say the An-26 plane was hit at an altitude of 6,500m (21,325ft).


The plane was targeted with "a more powerful missile" than a shoulder-carried missile, "probably fired" from Russia. The crew survived, reports say.


Russia has made no comment. Separately, Nato reported a Russian troop build-up near the Ukraine border.


A Nato official confirmed to the BBC that the alliance had observed a significant increase of Russian troops, bringing their number to up to 12,000.


Russia denies supporting and arming the separatists, and has invited officials from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor its border with Ukraine.


Direct talks plea A statement on Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko's website said the An-26 was taking part in an "anti-terror operation" in the region.

Luhansk: fighting in the area has intensified in recent days

Ukrainian government troops have re-taken control over a number of towns and villages in recent days

Ukrainian Defence Minister Valeriy Heletei said a search-and-rescue operation was under way to locate missing crew members.
Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's security and defence council, was later quoted by Ukrainian media as saying that eight people had been on board the plane.


The accusation that Russian forces shot down a Ukrainian transport plane is potentially a game changer. If Russia is indeed targeting Ukrainian airplanes from inside its territory, it is an act of aggression of the highest order.


For the Ukrainians not to respond would raise the suspicion that their charge is false - or demonstrate that the Ukrainian military is completely powerless.


But what can Ukraine do - declare war on Russia? The burden of proof is with the Ukrainian government. However, if they do convincingly show that the Russians shot down the plane, it also demands a response from another corner: Ukraine's Western allies.


If Western officials now do nothing, after promising repercussions for Russian aggression, it will be viewed in Ukraine as worse than weakness. It will be considered betrayal.



In a Facebook message, members of Ukraine's "anti-terror operation" said they knew "about the fate of two of the crew" and were checking information about the others.


Rebel forces - who earlier said they had targeted the aircraft in the Luhansk region - claimed they had captured the crew and were questioning them in the town of Krasnodon, reports in Russian media say.


Earlier on Monday, the Ukrainian air force said it had delivered "five powerful air strikes" in the region in an effort to end the blockade of a strategic airport.


Several targets were hit near the airport in the rebel-held city of Luhansk, a military spokesman said.


Ukraine's military later said the airport had been "unblocked" and the army had retaken several villages.


A resident in Luhansk has told the BBC that some air strikes hit Luhansk on Monday.


Meanwhile, the rebels claimed they had destroyed a Ukrainian armed convoy near the airport.


Fighting in the area has intensified since a rebel rocket attack near the Russian border on Friday, in which at least 19 government soldiers were killed.


Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has vowed retaliation for that attack.


Tensions rose further over the weekend when Russia accused Ukrainian forces of shelling across the border, killing one person and wounding two others.


At least 15 civilians were killed in Luhansk and the neighbouring Donetsk region on Sunday, reports say.


Germany and Russia have urged direct talks between Kiev and the rebels.


And the UK and US have renewed calls for Russia to de-escalate the situation in eastern Ukraine.


Prime Minister David Cameron and President Barack Obama stressed the need for Moscow to take further steps towards peace or face further sanctions.


Separatist rebels have been fighting the government in Kiev since declaring independence in Luhansk and the neighbouring region of Donetsk in April.


The government began an "anti-terrorist operation" in April to crush the rebellion in the eastern regions.


More than 1,000 civilians and combatants are believed to have died in the fighting, which followed Russia's annexation of Crimea in March.



Now for the important questions....
Can it be independently verified to have been a shoulder-fired AA missile or a 'more powerful' (SAM or fighter launched) missile that brought it down?

If a SAM or fighter launched, can it be confirmed beyond any doubt that it was Russian? Or by another country allied with the rebels?

Most importantly, if it is proven to be from Russian forces, and deliberately done, what will Pres Obama do about it?
In answer to the last one: most likely nothing other than meddle and make an exasperated situation all the worse.

 

[h=1]Kremlin dismisses direct strikes against Ukraine, but debate still rages in Russia[/h]
[h=2]Russian leadership is of two minds on how to respond to the ongoing fighting in Ukraine, which crossed the border over the weekend. But 'surgical strikes' appear to be off the table.[/h]
Moscow — A day after Ukrainian forces allegedly shelled a Russian border village, killing one person, the Kremlin appears to be preparing a tough response.
But "surgical strikes" against Ukrainian military forces deemed responsible for the attacks, as claimed by an anonymous Kremlin official in the major Moscow daily Kommersant? That's "nonsense," Vladimir Putin's spokesman said on Monday.
Experts say the conflicting signals coming out of the Kremlin show just how at odds it is with itself over what to do in eastern Ukraine, as conditions deteriorate and ferocious fighting bumps up against the long and relatively open border with Russia.


One faction, they say, advocates direct Russian action to support east Ukraine's beleaguered rebels – either by imposing a no-fly zone over the embattled region, or through pinpoint attacks on Ukrainian artillery units that are accused of firing on Ukrainian civilians and, occasionally, Russian ones too.

"When Israel reacts to provocations with an all-out attack on Gaza, the world is quite understanding about that," says Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Kremlin-funded Institute of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Moscow. "But Russia is supposed to sit back and take it? Our investigators have found shell fragments in the village that was attacked, and we know that only Ukrainian forces have artillery of this caliber. Russia is a great power, and it doesn't have to put up with this sort of thing in its backyard."


The other Kremlin faction, which appears to have the upper hand at the moment, favors caution. They argue that direct Russian intervention would only give Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko the rallying point he wants, and a winning argument for greater Western assistance. Instead, they say, Russia holds most of the cards in any long-term settlement for Ukraine. Moscow can afford to wait as the Poroshenko government muddles through what promises to be a long and bloody counter-insurgency in the country's east, even as Ukraine careens toward economic implosion.


"The Kremlin does not have a master plan for what to do in Ukraine; it's mostly reacting to events," says Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank with strong connections to the Russian Foreign Ministry. "The dominant view right now is that we should let Poroshenko reap the consequences of the military campaign he chose to embark on. It's easy to start a conflict like this, very hard to finish it up."


Mr. Kortunov says that Russia needs to stress its role as a diplomatic player, and as the huge neighbor Ukraine needs to rebuild its shattered economy and reconcile with embittered eastern Ukrainians.


"The pendulum will swing back in Ukraine, perhaps in unexpected ways. Russia can afford to wait," he says.


Kiev denies that its forces shelled the Russian border village Sunday and insists that it was the work of pro-Russian rebels. Ukrainian defense officials warn that Russia is stepping up "provocations" on the frontier, and has been allowing ever more pro-rebel volunteers and military equipment to cross into the embattled territory from Russia. Ukraine's best-known military expert, Dmitry Tymchuk, predicted on his Facebook page today that all signs point to a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine on Tuesday.


"Opinion in Russia is badly split over what to do about this. But so far, despite all the growing pressures, it seems that Putin has decided that the long-term price of intervening directly is too high," says Dmitry Polikanov, vice president of the PIR Center, an independent security think tank in Moscow.


"It's not just that our relations with the West would be greatly aggravated, it's also that we can't really afford the costs of peace-building in eastern Ukraine afterwards," Mr. Polikanov says. "Our best option now is to strengthen the border, and wait to see what will happen next. The ball is in Poroshenko's court."

 

[h=1]Russia asks envoys to visit town it says was hit by Ukraine shelling[/h]
(Reuters) - Russia has asked military attaches from 18 countries including the United States to visit a town in the Rostov region on Tuesday where Moscow says a shell fired from across the border in Ukraine killed one person.


The planned visit appeared part of a war of words between Ukraine and Russia intended to win international backing in the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists who have risen up in eastern Ukraine.


"The Defence Ministry of the Russian Federation has decided to familiarise foreign military specialists with the real situation in Donetsk in the Rostov region ... which (on Sunday) suffered destruction from artillery fire and shelling from Ukrainian territory," a ministry spokesman said.


Itar-Tass news agency quoted a defence official as saying military attaches from the other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - France, Britain and China - were also invited.


Ukraine has denied the Russian charges that Ukrainian government forces fired across the border. It says the separatist rebels systematically fire across the border into Russia to try to provoke Russian military intervention.


Moscow's angry response to the incident and reports of Russian troops being moved up to the border raised again the prospect of Russian intervention, after weeks in which President Vladimir Putin had appeared intent on disengaging.

 

[h=1]Ukraine: Russia builds border troop numbers[/h]
Ukraine yesterday accused Russian army officers of fighting alongside separatists in the east of the country, and said Moscow was once more building up its troops on the border.



A missile that brought down a Ukrainian transport plane carrying eight people near the border was probably fired from Russia, Ukrainian officials said.


Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, held an emergency meeting of his security chiefs after a weekend of Ukrainian air strikes on rebel positions near the border with Russia, and charges by Moscow that Kiev killed a Russian man with a cross-border shell.


The intense fighting, during which Ukrainian forces said they inflicted heavy losses on the rebels, marked a sharp escalation in the conflict.

Mr Poroshenko said: “Information has … been confirmed that Russian staff officers are taking part in military operations against Ukrainian forces.”


On Sunday he made similar complaints about Russian incursions to the European Union, aiming to push the bloc to exert greater pressure on Moscow.


Mr Poroshenko told his security chiefs that government forces were now facing a new Russian missile system and there would have to be a change in tactics.


Accusing Russia of embarking on a course of escalation in Ukraine’s eastern regions, National and Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said: “In the past 24 hours, deployment of [Russian] units and military equipment across the border from the Sumy and Luhansk border points was noticed. The Russian Federation continues to build up troops on the border.”


Independently, Nato said Russia had increased its forces along the border to about 10,000-12,000 troops.


The raised again the prospect of Russian intervention, after weeks in which the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, had appeared intent on disengaging, pulling back tens of thousands of troops from the frontier.


The Ukrainian army said it had broken a rebel encirclement of Luhansk airport on Sunday night. A spokesman for the pro-Russian so-called Luhansk People’s Republic said 30 volunteer fighters had been killed by Ukrainian fire on Oleksandrivka, a village to the east of the town.


As military action continued yesterday near the rebel-controlled border town of Luhansk, Ukraine’s defence minister said a Ukrainian AN-26 transport plane, taking part in the military campaign against the rebels, had been shot down by a rocket which was “probably” fired from Russian territory.


Mr Lysenko also rejected Russian charges that Ukrainian forces had fired a shell over the border on Sunday, killing a Russian man. Moscow has described the incident as an “aggressive act” which would have “irreversible consequences”.


Russia said it had invited monitors from the OSCE, a European security and rights body, to visit two of its border crossings as a sign of goodwill.


In a weekend of fierce combat, Ukraine said it had inflicted heavy losses on pro-Russian separatists in air strikes on their positions, including an armoured convoy which Kiev said had crossed the border from Russia.


Mr Poroshenko’s office said Kiev would present documentary proof of incursions from Russia to the international community via diplomats.


Hundreds of rebels, led by a self-proclaimed defence minister from Moscow, have retreated to the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, built reinforcements and pledged to make a stand. The once-bustling city has been emptying in fear of a battle.


Rebel fighters on Monday were evacuating about 200 Donetsk residents by bus across the border into the Rostov area.


Vladimir, 55, a coal miner, said he was sending his wife and two children to stay with relatives across the border. He said: “The Ukrainians have already cut off water. Electricity is only just working. How can you live without water and light?”

 

[h=1]Ukraine warns of Russian invasion, sets truce talks[/h]
Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukraine's Western-backed leaders on Tuesday invited pro-Kremlin insurgents to a videoconference aimed at halting spiralling violence and what Kiev warned was an imminent invasion by thousands of Russian troops.





Kiev sharply raised the stakes in Europe's most explosive crisis in decades by declaring on Monday that a Ukrainian transport plane downed in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired from the Russian side of the frontier between the two ex-Soviet states.


Russia has broken with its traditional denials of all links to the uprising by not publicly responding to the charge.


A top Ukrainian general went a step further by telling a live television audience in Kiev that he feared a Russian invasion was imminent.


"Ukraine, like never before, stands on the cusp of a wide-scale aggression from our current northern border," said National Security and Defence Council Deputy Secretary Mykhaylo Koval.


The former defence minister said the Kremlin had parked 22,000 troops in the annexed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and had other units stretching from the north-central region of Chernigiv to the southeastern edge of the Russian-Ukranian border on the Sea of Azov.


Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office said Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also presented "photo and video evidence" of Russia covertly supplying the fighters with weapons and armoured vehicles.





President Vladimir Putin rejects accusations of orchestrating the uprising in reprisal for the February ouster of a Russian-backed leader and Kiev's subsequent signature of a historic EU deal instead of a new Kremlin pact.


Fears of Russia's direct intervention and the soaring civilian toll -- 23 more people were reported killed overnight -- has intensified pressure on Western allies to quickly address their worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War.



- Skype talks -



Germany and France have been spearheading EU efforts to revive a Ukrainian truce that could save the bloc from having to introduce sweeping economic sanctions against energy-rich Russia to which Putin has already vowed to respond.


The United States has pressed EU leaders to impose arms sale restrictions and limited financial sanctions on Russia when they meet at a summit in Brussels on Wednesday.


Indirect negotiations between Kiev -- represented by former president Leonid Kuchma -- and the separatists aimed at extending a shaky 10-day ceasefire fizzled out after two rounds last month.






But Poroshenko's office said he had agreed with Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel to arrange "Skype videoconference talks" that Kiev had first suggested last week.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Vasyl Zvarych expressed confidence that the consultations would be held on Tuesday.



- Soaring civilian toll -



The border became the conflict's new frontline after rebels last week evacuated a host of towns and cities that they had held since early April in the coal mining region of Donetsk.


The militias have since concentrated their forces around the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk -- both capitals of their own "People's Republics" -- and are hoping for new weapons deliveries to revive their campaign.


Witnesses in Donetsk told AFP they had seen the insurgents dispatch four tanks and eight armoured transport vehicles towards Lugansk to help repel an intensifying air and artillery push by Kiev forces on the city of 420,000 people.


Defence officials said four of the downed plane's eight crew had been rescued in rebel territory.


"Two servicemen were captured by the rebels and efforts to rescue them are underway. The fate of the other two crew is unknow," the Ukrainian military said in a statement.


Ukraine also temporarily grounded all its jets in the two separatist regions as a safety precaution.


Lugansk on Tuesday declared three days mourning for 17 civilians killed since the weekend in artillery strikes that both sides have blamed on each other.


But local authorities reported the death of nearly two dozen more civilians across the rustbelt -- including 11 people killed when their building apartment block crumbled after being hit by a missile in the Russian border town of Snizhne.


A defence spokesman said six Ukrainian soldiers had also been killed overnight as the toll in the low-scale war approached 600 civilians and fighters on both sides.


The National Security and Defence Council reported the death of 258 servicemen and capture of another 45 since Kiev launched its "anti-terrorist operation" on April 13.

 

[h=1]The Russian Double Game Continues in Ukraine[/h]
As fighting intensifies in eastern Ukraine, signs are emerging that Russian President Vladimir Putin has adopted a twin strategy: pledge his willingness to support a negotiated settlement, but continue funneling arms to separatist rebels.
“Putin in the last several weeks has been playing a dual game,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and Brookings Institution senior fellow. “There have been things that suggest that Russia wants to help solve this diplomatically. … But you’ve continued to see evidence that Russians weapons are flowing into Ukraine.”

[h=3]Author[/h] David Rohde is an investigative reporter for Reuters, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and a former reporter for The New York Times. His latest book, Beyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East, was published in April. More He is the author, with Kristen Mulvihill, of A ... Full Bio
Three weeks ago, after months of bellicose rhetoric, Putin had Russia’s parliament revoke his authority to use Russian military force in Ukraine. Then on Thursday, Putin issued a joint call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
The cause of Putin’s apparent change in tone is the focus of debate in Washington. Obama administration officials credit American and European sanctions with slowing both Russia’s economy and Putin’s efforts to sow chaos in eastern Ukraine. But former U.S. diplomats contend that while two rounds of sanctions have helped, they’re not the key factor in blunting Moscow’s designs. The successes of Ukraine’s new government and failures of its separatists are the primary cause. “That’s first and foremost because of what the Ukrainians are doing,” said Michael McFaul, who until February served as the Obama administration’s ambassador to Moscow and point man on Russia.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, elected in May, has done a surprisingly good job of turning Ukraine’s military into a more effective fighting force. Ukraine has received $20 million in American military aid, as well as intelligence and advice. But it is the new government’s vetting of troops, decisiveness, and willingness to take casualties that have given its military an edge.
At the same time, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have done a poor job of generating popular support. Instead of sparking a pro-Russian popular uprising, they have alienated much of the population in eastern Ukraine. “Separatists have worn out their welcome,” Pifer said. “The population is tired of this.”
On Monday, Poroshenko accused Russian military officers of fighting alongside separatists. A missile that downed a Ukrainian transport plane carrying eight people near the border was probably fired from Russia, Ukrainian officials said. And on Friday, Ukrainian officials said a Grad missile attack that killed 23 Ukrainian soldiers showed that Russian arms are flowing to rebels as well. Russian officials deny supplying or aiding the rebels.
The situation remains volatile. Poroshenko and Putin could be drawn into a dangerous tit-for-tat cycle as the fighting intensifies. Tensions rose on Sunday when Russian officials threatened Ukraine with “irreversible consequences” after a Russian citizen was killed by a shell fired across the border from Ukraine. Kiev said the accusation that its forces had fired across the border was nonsense and suggested the attack could have been the work of rebels trying to provoke Moscow to intervene on their behalf. The rebels denied they were responsible.
Poroshenko’s strong performance since taking office has been a key factor in blunting Moscow, said Eugene Rumer, who served as the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the U.S. National Intelligence Council from 2010 to January 2014. While offering to hold peace talks, Poroshenko has mounted decisive military action against the separatists, Rumer added. At the same time, Poroshenko has taken a softer line against Putin himself. “I was pleasantly surprised when he spoke out against further sanctions against Russia,” said Rumer, now a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He was statesmanlike. He was signaling to the Russians that he’s willing to make a deal. And that is significant.”

Matthew Rojansky, a Russia expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center, cautioned that time may be on Putin’s side. He said Washington had a long history of focusing intently on any anti-Moscow uprising, typically known as a “color revolution,” and then quickly shifting its attention elsewhere. “The bigger challenge is not going back to our bad old habit, which is to get very, very excited after color revolutions happen,” Rojansky said, “and then completely forget that these countries exist.” Putin knows that, he added, and is playing a long game to Washington’s short game.
Thomas Graham, who was the National Security Council’s senior director for Russia under President George W. Bush, argued that Putin has never wanted to invade and annex eastern Ukraine. Instead, his goal has been to maintain influence over Ukraine’s government. “I thought all along that the goal really was to have leverage on the government in Kiev,” Graham said. “And to ensure at a minimum that it’s not hostile and it’s not moving quickly toward Europe.”
Pifer, the former ambassador to Ukraine, said there is a danger Poroshenko will be too aggressive militarily. Ukrainian forces re-took Slovyansk, a city of roughly 130,000, earlier this month. But Pifer argued that regaining control of Donetsk—an industrial city of 900,000 where separatists are digging in for a last stand—would be far more difficult. Any military operation that kills large numbers of civilians—or separatists—could shift public opinion against the Ukrainian government. “It’s also important that Poroshenko not overplay his hand,” Pifer said. “You don’t want a military operation that turns the population against you.”
Putin’s embrace of Russian nationalism has created domestic political concerns for him as well, said Andrew Weiss, a Carnegie Endowment expert and former Clinton administration National Security Council official. After unleashing ultra-nationalist Russian groups in eastern Ukraine, Putin is now being accused by right-wing politicians in Moscow of abandoning the separatists.
“If they get slaughtered or routed,” said Weiss, “there will be a lot of pressure on the Russian government to react.”

 

[h=1]EU to discuss new Russia sanctions, Ukraine warns of invasion[/h]

Kiev (AFP) - EU leaders meet on Wednesday to decide on new sanctions against Russia and pro-Moscow separatists in east Ukraine as Kiev raises fears of an imminent invasion by thousands of Russian troops.




A diplomatic source told AFP Tuesday that it was "looking very possible" that the European Union at its summit in Brussels would agree to a new round of sanctions and denied the move was due to pressure from Washington.


The United States meanwhile has signalled it could go it alone on toughening sanctions against Russia with a raft of unilateral measures that have been prepared which could cause new blows to Russia's economy, a senior US official told AFP.


But efforts to coordinate with Europe continue as US Vice President Joe Biden told Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in a phone call Tuesday "that the United States was engaging with European leaders to discuss the imposition of costs on Russia for its continued escalation of the conflict," a White House statement said.


Kiev has urged the West to impose new sanctions as it sharply raised the stakes in the explosive crisis by declaring that a Ukrainian transport plane downed Monday in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired from the Russian side of the frontier between the two ex-Soviet states.


Russia has broken with its traditional denials of all links to the uprising by not publicly responding to the charge.





A top Ukrainian general went a step further by telling a live television audience in Kiev that he feared a Russian invasion was imminent.

"Ukraine, like never before, stands on the cusp of a wide-scale aggression from our current northern border," said National Security and Defence Council Deputy Secretary Mykhaylo Koval.


The former defence minister said the Kremlin had parked 22,000 troops in the annexed Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and had other units stretching from the north-central region of Chernigiv to the southeastern edge of the Russian-Ukrainian border on the Sea of Azov.


Poroshenko's office said Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also presented "photo and video evidence" of Russia covertly supplying the fighters with weapons and armoured vehicles.


President Vladimir Putin rejects accusations of orchestrating the uprising in reprisal for the February ouster of a Russian-backed leader and Kiev's subsequent signature of a historic EU deal instead of a new Kremlin pact.





Fears of Russia's direct intervention and the soaring civilian toll -- 23 more people were reported killed overnight -- has intensified pressure on Western allies to quickly address their worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War.


- Skype talks -



Germany and France have been spearheading EU efforts to revive a Ukrainian truce that could save the bloc from having to introduce sweeping economic sanctions against energy-rich Russia to which Putin has already vowed to respond.


The United States has pressed EU leaders to impose arms sale restrictions and limited financial sanctions on Russia at their summit on Wednesday.


Ahead of the meeting, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, whose country is an advocate for Ukraine at the EU, met in Kiev Tuesday with Poroshenko and other top Ukrainian officials.





Indirect negotiations between Kiev -- represented by former president Leonid Kuchma -- and the separatists aimed at extending a shaky 10-day ceasefire fizzled out after two rounds last month.


But Poroshenko's office said he had agreed with German Chancellor Angela Merkel to arrange "Skype videoconference talks" that Kiev had first suggested last week.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Vasyl Zvarych had expressed confidence that the consultation would be held on Tuesday but there has been no word on whether or not it took place.


- Soaring civilian toll -




An observer team from the Organisation for Security and Cooperaion in Europe on Wednesday is due to visit the Ukrainian-Russian border, which became the conflict's new frontline after rebels last week evacuated towns and cities that they had held since early April in the coal mining region of Donetsk.





The militias have since concentrated their forces around the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk -- both capitals of their own "People's Republics" -- and are hoping for new weapons deliveries to revive their campaign.


Witnesses in Donetsk told AFP they had seen the insurgents dispatch four tanks and eight armoured transport vehicles towards Lugansk to help repel an intensifying air and artillery push by Kiev forces on the city of 420,000 people.


Defence officials said four of the downed plane's eight crew had been rescued in rebel territory.


"Two servicemen were captured by the rebels and efforts to rescue them are under way. The fate of the other two crew is unknown," the Ukrainian military said in a statement.


Ukraine also temporarily grounded all its jets in the two separatist regions as a safety precaution.


Lugansk on Tuesday declared three days mourning for 17 civilians killed since the weekend in artillery strikes that both sides have blamed on each other.


But local authorities reported the death of nearly two dozen more civilians across the rustbelt -- including 11 people killed when their apartment block crumbled after being hit by a missile in the Russian border town of Snizhne.


A defence spokesman said six Ukrainian soldiers had also been killed overnight as the toll in the low-scale war approached 600 civilians and fighters on both sides.
The National Security and Defence Council reported the death of 258 servicemen and capture of another 45 since Kiev launched its "anti-terrorist operation" on April 13.

 

[h=1]US readies unilateral sanctions on Russia[/h]
Washington (AFP) - The United States signaled it could go it alone on toughening sanctions on Russia if Europe does not agree to increase pain for Moscow over its "destabilizing" policies in Ukraine.





A raft of unilateral measures have been prepared that President Barack Obama could use to land new blows on the Russian economy, if European leaders meeting in Brussels on Wednesday do not decide to take similar steps, a senior US official told AFP.


But the White House has not yet decided on any move that would mark a departure from its insistence on moving in tandem with Europe on sanctions, the official said, on condition of anonymity.


Intense discussions are continuing with US allies and Washington would clearly prefer to move in coordination with Europe on measures that could target sectors of the Russian economy and defense industry -- because joint action would likely be most effective.


There were signs Tuesday that US pressure on Europe, and more alarming news from Ukraine's civil war could be concentrating minds in Brussels.


An EU source said a new round of sanctions was looking "very possible" on the eve of the leaders summit.


Possible measures could include measures to freeze programs in Russia run by the EU's European Investment Bank and the London-based European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.


The European measures would likely fall short however of the phase three "sectoral sanctions" once mooted to hammer the Russian economy.

View gallery

US President Barack Obama (R) and British Prime Minister David Cameron hold a joint press conference …



The source also said that new signs Europe could move on sanctions had nothing to do with US pressure.


But events in Ukraine certainly looked grim and could make it impossible for the leaders to resist new sanctions.


The Kiev government raised the stakes in the showdown by warning on Monday that a Ukrainian transport plane downed in the eastern conflict zone had been hit by a rocket fired by the Russian side of the border.


Obama has spent weeks building support among US allies for new sanctions on Moscow after unveiling measures earlier this year to target "cronies" around Russian President Vladimir Putin and officials involved in Ukraine policy.


Obama believes Russia has not met conditions laid out by G7 leaders at a Brussels summit last month to stop destabilizing Ukraine. Those conditions include steps by Russia to secure the border to prevent heavy weapons and material being sent into eastern Ukraine


Also Tuesday, Obama telephoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the crisis, the White House said.


"The leaders agreed that to date neither the United States nor Germany has seen Russia fulfill these required actions," the White House stressed.


The West also wants Putin to coordinate with the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe on a border-monitoring mechanism and to use his influence with separatists to convince them to lay down their arms.


"The longer that this goes on, the more difficult it will be for us to put Ukraine on the stable, sound footing, both politically and economically, that we would like to see them be on," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Tuesday.


Earnest also declined to telegraph where and when US sanctions could strike, as US officials seek to prevent likely targets in Russia from shielding assets or moving money out of harms way.


There have been clear signs this week that Washington is losing patience, and that it wants Europe to move on sanctions.


On Monday, the State Department issued a fact sheet detailing what it said were Russia's continuing efforts to destabilize Ukraine and to support separatists.


Vice President Joe Biden has made repeated telephone calls to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has presided over a military operation to seize back territory in eastern Ukraine from separatists.


Biden Tuesday "told President Poroshenko that the United States was engaging with European leaders to discuss the imposition of costs on Russia for its continued escalation of the conflict," a White House statement warned.

 

[h=1]Russia feels heat of Ukraine conflict[/h]

Russia's Ministry of Defence has shown journalists what it says is the aftermath of a shell attack on its soil on Sunday, which killed one man.
Ukraine denies any involvement in the attack.
The dispute is part of the information war between the two countries, trying to blame each other for the fighting.
Daniel Sandford reports from the Russian side of the border.

 

[h=1]More Ukrainian soldiers killed as fighting rages in east, peace move flops[/h]

KIEV (Reuters) - Fighting raged in Ukraine's east on Wednesday when separatists tried to break through the lines of government forces near the border with Russia and a tentative step towards agreeing conditions for a ceasefire failed.


Eleven more Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the space of 24 hours while hundreds of bodies of rebels were found in shallow graves in a former separatist stronghold, the army said.


Fighting has escalated sharply since Friday with the downing of a Ukrainian military transport plane and the deaths of civilians in air and artillery attacks on residential areas on both sides of the border, which Russia and Ukraine have blamed on each other.


Accusations of direct Russian involvement in the three and a half month conflict, in which hundreds have died, is being pushed hard by Ukraine to persuade the United States and its European allies to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.


In telephone conversations with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, late on Tuesday, President Petro Poroshenko again set out evidence of fighters crossing into Ukraine from Russia with heavy military equipment, his website said.


Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk leveled harsh criticism at Russian President Vladimir Putin.





"Everything which is happening in Ukraine has been planned by Russia since 2004. Putin has a clear plan and that is to destroy Ukraine and establish his influence over post-Soviet space," he said in a public speech carried by his website.


Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's defense and security council, told journalists that separatists had kept up attacks overnight on government positions along the border.


Government troops had been ambushed by separatists at Izvarino on the border and there had been early morning clashes near the border settlement of Stepanivka when separatists tried to break out of encirclement by the army.


"There was tank and mortar fire and from rockets on positions of the (Ukrainian) 'anti-terrorist operation'," Lysenko said. The number of casalties was being established.

Lysenko renewed charges that Russia was building up its forces near the border.


OVERFLIGHTS RESUME




View gallery


New volunteers of Ukrainian self-defence battalion "Azov" take their oath of allegiance to …


But he said, after being temporarily grounded on Tuesday after the downing of an An-26 transporter, Ukrainian warplanes had been given the go-ahead to resume flights over the east.


"They...are already supporting our ground forces in those regions where the toughest clashes are going on," he said.


The new casualty figures would appear to bring to nearly 270 the number of Ukrainian servicemen killed since the government launched an "anti-terrorist" operation in April to crush the rebels. Hundreds of civilians and rebels have also been killed.


Lysenko said that in Slaviansk, a former rebel stronghold re-taken by government forces, "hundreds of bodies of...(rebel) fighters" had been found under a light covering of earth.


"Some of these graves have been mined by the terrorists."


Violence erupted in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east in April after a pro-Europe revolt in Kiev that ousted a Moscow-backed president and led to Russia's annexation of Crimea, causing the biggest Russia-West crisis since the Cold War.





A 'contact group' of officials from Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said it tried on Tuesday to re-activate peace talks - but a planned video link-up with separatists never materialised.


"In the opinion of the contact group, this indicates a lack of willingness on the side of separatists to engage in substantive talks on a mutually agreed ceasefire," it said in a statement. It urged separatists to return to talks immediately.


Ukraine has accused Russia repeatedly of turning a blind eye to Russian fighters crossing the long, shared border to team up with rebels, often with Russian weapons and military equipment. Moscow denies this.


In an increasing war of words and mutual recrimination, Moscow accused Ukrainian forces of firing a shell across the border last Sunday, killing a Russian man in a Russian border town. Kiev denies its forces were to blame and says the shell was the work of rebels out to discredit government forces.


Eleven people were said by local health authorities to have been killed in an air strike at the Ukrainian town of Snizhne, 20 km (12 miles) from the border.


Kiev denied rebel charges that the strike had been carried out by a Ukrainian warplane and said it was the work of an "unknown" plane - apparently an accusation against Russia, since the rebels have not used aircraft in the conflict.


Kiev has also said that a missile that brought down the An-26 military transporter was probably fired from Russian territory. Kiev says it has found four survivors from the eight people who were on board, that two others are being held by rebels, and that it does not know the fate of the remaining two.


Since losing Slaviansk, rebels has been pushed back to the main industrial city of Donetsk though they also remain in control of the border town of Luhansk.


Donetsk, which had a pre-conflict population of about 900,000 people, has been steadily emptying as thousands, fearing a government offensive, have fled.


Once a bustling city, there are fewer and fewer people out on the streets and few cars. Most of the banks, shops and bars have closed, cash-dispensers have been switched off and street traffic lights no longer work.


Lyudmila, 35, who was leaving Donetsk, said: "I have been forced to gather up my things and get away from this lawless, genocide, which is happening. I am simply saving my children. My husband is staying behind. I have left my home and my work. I am leaving to save my children."

 

[h=1]Ukraine rebels reclaim village on Russian border[/h]
DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Separatist rebels said they retook a village near the Russian border from government forces Wednesday as both sides pressed to claim territory in eastern Ukraine.





Sergei Kavtaradze, a spokesman for separatists in Donetsk, said one rebel militiaman was killed and 15 others injured in fighting in the village of Marinivka. The insurgency's military leader, Igor Girkin, told the Russian television station LifeNews that his men destroyed two Ukrainian armored vehicles and captured another.


Since the start of the month, Ukrainian forces have halved the territory held by the insurgency, which is seeking to wrest two eastern regions from Kiev. Government efforts have focused efforts on sealing the border with Russia, where insurgents are believed to draw much of their hardware and manpower. The rebels have captured several Ukrainian border points.


The Interfax news agency cited a Russian border service official as saying that two heavily wounded Ukrainian border guards appealed to their Russian colleagues for medical assistance at the crossing near Marinivka.


In the rebel-held city of Donetsk, a stronghold for insurgent forces, militiamen loaded family members Wednesday onto buses heading to Russia. Daria Morozova, whose organization coordinates the flow of refugees from the eastern city, said 10 buses carrying 500 people were set to leave for Russia's Rostov region.


Ukraine, meanwhile, announced that the Air Force will resume missions over the conflict zone for the first time since a military transport plane was shot down Monday.




German Chancellor Angela Merkel discussed Ukraine's unfolding security crisis in separate phone calls Tuesday with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and with President Barack Obama, according to her spokesman, Steffen Seibert.


Poroshenko told her there are indications that heavy weapons are getting to separatists across the Russian border and that attacks upon Ukrainian forces from Russian territory are increasing, Seibert said.


Seibert said Obama and Merkel expressed disappointment that Ukraine has still not talked with rebel representatives. The leaders also agreed that Russia had failed to implement effective border surveillance as hoped.


Merkel said the "possible consequences of these so-far disappointed expectations will be an issue" at Wednesday's European Union summit in Brussels, Seibert said.