Ukraine: Russian tanks made run on steel port
Armored column, fighters cross border
MOSCOW – Ukraine accused Russia of sending separatist fighters and an armored column into its embattled eastern region on Monday, describing the incursion as an attempt to open up a second front in the conflict now that pro-Russia forces are bottled up in their last two strongholds.
Two of the 10 tanks in the armored convoy that entered Ukrainian territory at 5:20 a.m. local time were destroyed by Ukrainian border forces and the rest of the column was blocked from moving forward to its apparent destination of Mariupol, Col. Andriy Lysenko told reporters in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.
Mariupol, a steel-making city on the Sea of Azov that has been fought over for months by pro-Russia separatists and government forces, has gained strategic significance for Kiev since Russia annexed its other major ports on the Crimean peninsula in March. Crimea is the home base for Russia’s Black Sea fleet, and the February overthrow of Ukraine’s former Russia-allied president prompted the Kremlin to seize the peninsula.
NATO officials reported last week that surveillance by the alliance had detected incidents of Russian forces firing artillery inside Ukraine and from across its eastern border.
In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he had no information about the Russian armored column reported by Lysenko, who had said the tanks flew the flag of the separatist pro-Russia militants from the Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
Lysenko accused Moscow of seeking to escalate the conflict ahead of today’s meeting of the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus in the Belarussian capital of Minsk.
The gathering of the former Soviet republics’ heads of state is ostensibly to discuss economic cooperation under the Kremlin-controlled Eurasian Customs Union, which Ukraine has rejected in favor of a trade deal with the 28-nation European Union.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko are expected to meet separately on the sidelines of the Minsk summit to discuss the conflict in Ukraine’s largely Russian-speaking eastern regions. More than 2,000 people have been killed in five months of fighting that has left pro-Russia fighters bottled up in Donetsk and the city of Luhansk.
Russian officials have consistently denied involvement in the fighting in eastern Ukraine, although many of the separatists’ civilian and military leaders have conceded they are Russian citizens and the bodies of dozens of separatist fighters have been identified as Russian mercenaries and nationalists.