BackUkraine concerned by Russian buildup as Luhansk residents flee
Half the residents of the city of Luhansk fled as the fighting got closer
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Kiev: Ukraine expressed concern about a new buildup of Russian forces on its border as it pursued an offensive against pro-Moscow separatists. Half the residents of the city of Luhansk fled as the fighting got closer.
The Ukrainian operation against the rebels may give Russia an excuse to invade, Mykhailo Koval, deputy head of Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council, said on Monday. With 33,000 troops near the border, including 23,000 in the Crimean peninsula that was annexed from Ukraine in March, as well as 160 tanks, there is a clear demonstration of preparation by Russia to conduct active military actions, Koval told ICTV.
All this is aimed at keeping the Ukrainian military on its toes, Timothy Ash, an emerging-markets economist at Standard Bank Group Plc in London, said in an e-mail. While Russia continues to pursue such maneuvers, the Ukrainian military has to deploy troops along its border to counter the threat of a Russian invasion, and hence diverting scarce troops away from their ongoing offensive.
With the Ukrainian army advancing on Luhansk and the other rebel stronghold, Donetsk, Russia’s air force began a five-day exercise involving more than 100 planes on Monday. Tensions have been further raised by an incident in which several hundred Ukrainian servicemen crossed the border; more than half have remained in Russia.
Luhansk evacuation
About half of Luhansk’s 465,000 inhabitants have evacuated the city amid continuing fighting, city council spokesman Oleksandr Savenko told Channel 112 television. The remaining 250,000 people are unable or unwilling to leave, he said.
Luhansk, most of whose residents have been without electricity for more than a week, is on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe, the council said on its website. Some are also without water and fixed-line or mobile phones, it said.
Many of those remaining in Luhansk, which lies close to the Russian border, are retired people or families with children, while only a couple of drugstores are continuing to open and four hospitals and three clinics have been partly destroyed, according to the council.
Russia’s benchmark Micex stock index fell 1.1% at 12:57 pm in Moscow. The yield on the Ukrainian government’s dollar-denominated bond maturing in 2017 rose 11 basis points to 9.48%, extending an increase over the past three days to 65 basis points, while the UX equity index fell 0.8%, taking its drop over four days to 3.2%.
Access cut
Ukraine’s army took control of Yasynuvata, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from central Donetsk, cutting the access for rebels to roads from the north, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a briefing in Kiev on Monday.
The separatist forces, which now number about 15,000, up from 300 when the conflict started, hold less than half the territory they did four weeks ago, Ukrainian defense minister Valeriy Geletey said in a BBC interview broadcast two days ago. More than 65 towns and villages in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine have been retaken, he said.
We are deeply concerned by Russia’s plan to conduct a large military aviation exercise this week in areas bordering Ukraine, US state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Monday. Exercises of this kind are provocative and only serve to escalate tensions. Russia has repeatedly called for a peaceful solution to the situation in Ukraine and must match its words with deeds by ceasing the flow of weapons, fighters, and money into Ukraine, and by moving its military forces away from the Ukrainian border.
Expanded sanctions
Ukraine’s armed forces are pressing ahead with their offensive after the US and the European Union increased pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin over his backing for the rebels with an expansion of sanctions. The downing of Malaysian Air Flight MH17 on 17 July, which the US says was probably caused by a missile fired by the insurgents, has helped harden attitudes against Russia. The rebels and Putin’s government blame Ukrainian forces.
Ukraine’s defense ministry accused rebel forces of opening fire on a group of almost 200 servicemen who returned from Russia on Tuesday after crossing the border. The insurgents must have been aware of the timing and route of the repatriation, the ministry said on its Facebook page.
Russian citizenship
Of a total of 438 Ukrainian servicemen who crossed the frontier, only 195 asked to return home, Vasily Mayaev, a spokesman for the FSB security service, told reporters on Monday in Rostov, southern Russia. The remaining soldiers may apply for Russian citizenship at their own discretion, he said. Ukraine said the troops, who were fighting near the border, had no option but to cross over after they were shelled from Russian territory.
More than 1,000 people have died in the fighting so far. While Russia has repeatedly denied any involvement in the conflict, the US and its EU allies blame Putin for failing to rein in the insurgency and stop the war.
Russia is ready for any format of talks with the EU, the US.Ukraine, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday in an interview with the Itar-Tass news service. BLOOMBERG
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