Loud explosions and artillery fire rocked Donetsk airport in eastern Ukraine yesterday, despite attempts to negotiate an end to a battle that is undermining a ceasefire in regions held by separatists.
A Reuters reporter near the strategically important airport saw flashes of artillery fire in several places and heard frequent blasts in new clashes between the pro-Russian rebels and government forces despite the truce agreed on September 5.
A separatist leader, Andrei Purgin, said on Sunday the rebels had reached an agreement with the Ukrainian forces to stop shelling around Donetsk airport, which both Ukrainian and rebel forces lay partial claim to.
But a military spokesman from the Ukrainian government headquarters in Kiev said the agreement was meant only to allow the rebels to recover the dead and wounded from the airport and that fighting had abated overnight.
“Now, I understand, they have sorted out the corpses and have started shooting again,” said the spokesman, Vladyslav Seleznyov.
Each side keeps accusing the other of violating the ceasefire and the situation in the east has deteriorated since the rebels held leadership elections on November 2, a vote that the central government in Kiev and the West said was a violation of the ceasefire deal.
Ukraine and the West are saying that the pro-Russian separatists could be about to launch a new offensive
Kiev responded by saying it would no longer fund the rebel-held areas and accusing Russia of sending in troops and tanks to support the separatists, a charge that Moscow keeps on denying.
Meanwhile European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels to discuss how to respond to the November 2 elections are still not clear about the response from the EU.
Officials said they may agree to impose personal sanctions on more rebels but were unlikely to take new steps against Russia, on which the EU has already imposed several rounds of sanctions.
Ukraine and the West say the separatists could be about to launch a new offensive, echoing a similar accusation the rebels have levelled at the pro-Western government’s forces.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kiev six servicemen had been killed in the past 24 hours and listed several other exchanges of artillery fire with rebels.
The rebels gave no details of new casualties in a conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people since the rebels rose up in mid-April, a month after Russia responded to the overthrow of a Moscow-backed president in Kiev by annexing the Crimea region which has led to a series of actions and reactions from both the West and Russia itself.