Ukraine takes back villages from pro-Russia rebels
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UKRAINIAN troops have recaptured more than a dozen eastern villages from pro-Russia militants but Russia is allowing the rebels to attack Ukrainian border posts from its territory, a top security official said yesterday.
National Security Council Secretary Andriy Parubiy also said Russia was massing troops near the Ukrainian border.
The two neighbors share a 2,000-kilometer long border that is unmarked and unguarded outside of a few checkpoints.
There was no immediate response from Russia to either statement, which came as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko expressed a willingness to take part in new peace talks as early as today.
Ukraine said Russia is arming and supporting the separatists in the east, a charge that Russia denies. Ukraine is wary about Russia possibly grabbing more territory after Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea in March. The rebels have asked to join Russia and Russian nationalists have urged Putin to send troops into Ukraine, but Putin has resisted those demands.
Poroshenko, in a statement yesterday, said Ukraine had proposed a place and a time for talks but had not heard back from the other parties.
Representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the rebels took part in earlier talks along with representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Parubiy said government forces were attacking rebel positions in east Ukraine with artillery and planes and that 17 villages had been recaptured since a unilateral cease fire expired on Monday.
He said Ukrainian forces now control 23 of the 36 local regions within Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, the two regions along the Russian border that have declared independence from Poroshenko’s government in Kiev. They are not in control, however, of the region’s two main cities.
Ukrainian border checkpoints in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions were still being attacked, from inside Ukraine and from Russian territory, he said.
“Fighting aiming at defending the border and liquidating (rebels) in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions continues,” Parubiy said at a news conference in Kiev. “This is taking place during the constant movement of military equipment and armed forces of the Russian Federation close to Ukraine’s border.”
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