Talks in Berlin as Kiev forces enter Lugansk
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KIEV forces battled into a key rebel stronghold yesterday as Moscow denied fresh claims that Russian rocket launchers had crossed over into Ukraine to bolster the separatists’ flagging insurgency.
In Berlin, meanwhile, the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France gathered for a crisis meeting, and Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier said talks would be “all about finding a roadmap toward a sustainable cease-fire.”
Kiev’s military said it hoisted the national flag over a district police station in a northeast suburb of the second-largest rebel stronghold of Lugansk after a fierce battle with pro-Russian separatists on Saturday.
A push into the city limits of the stricken 420,000-strong industrial hub would be a major breakthrough for government forces after four months of fighting that has claimed more than 2,100 lives and brought the region to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.
Ukraine also ramped up the stakes before the talks in Germany by alleging another military convoy, including three Grad rocket systems, crossed over from Russia.
The fresh claims come as a furore still swirls over Kiev’s earlier boasts that it destroyed part of a Russian armored convoy that breached the frontier on Thursday.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said yesterday’s talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov would “not be easy” as Germany also demanded that Moscow clarify rebel claims they had received hundreds of fighters trained in Russia to shore up their insurgency.
A Kremlin spokesman denied Moscow had sent “equipment” across the border.
Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continued to haggle over a mammoth Russian aid convoy parked near the border as officials said inspections of the roughly 300 lorries would not start yesterday.
One reporter saw 16 trucks drive from a parking lot where they have been idling since Thursday to a Russian border post some 30 kilometers away.
The West and Kiev fear the convoy could be a “Trojan horse” to help the rebels in eastern Ukraine, or provide Moscow with an excuse to send in the troops NATO says it has massed on the border.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has said Russian and Ukrainian officials agreed on procedures to check the cargo — supposedly bound for Lugansk — but insisted that “security guarantees” are still needed on how the vehicles could cross rebel-held territory.
President Petro Poroshenko told US Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday that the separatists had yet to grant safe passage for the aid.
Russia’s foreign ministry has repeatedly demanded that Kiev cease fire in order for the aid to reach residents of blighted cities in eastern Ukraine.
Around the region fierce clashes continued, with Ukraine’s military saying a MiG fighter jet was shot down not far from Lugansk, the scene of some of the heaviest clashes, and where power and water were not working for the 15th day running.
The United Nations says more than 285,000 people have fled the fighting in the east.
Authorities in the main rebel city of Donetsk said shelling killed 10 civilians and wounded eight in 24 hours as government forces tightened the vice on rebels there.
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