Fighters from one of the Russian-backed armed groups that have seized control of parts of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast have occupied a strategic village near Mariupol, Ukraine’s military said on Dec. 22.
A group of
about 100 fighters entered the village of Kominternovo, which straddles one of the main roads leading into Mariupol from the east, on the morning of Dec.
22, Ukrainian military spokesman Anton Myronovych told Ukrainian television’s
112 Ukraina channel.
“According
to our information, (the fighters) have armored vehicles, possibly even tanks
and other weapons, which is prohibited by the Minsk (peace) agreements,”
Myronovych said.
He described
the occupation of the village as a “large-scale provocation,” and said the
armed forces had reported the move to the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe – the organization that is supposed to be policing a
ceasefire regime and a zone free of heavy weapons agreed under the Minsk peace
deal.
“In this
way they want to provoke us into taking retaliatory action, perhaps by liberating
the settlement with the use of heavy weapons,” Myronovych said.
From
Kominternovo, the city of Mariupol would be within the range of 120 mm mortar
shells, he said.
Alexander
Zakharchenko, the leader of several Russian-backed armed groups that have
seized control in part of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, has said several times that
his fighters intend to take control of the key southern port city of Mariupol,
and even extend the area they control to the borders of the whole of Donetsk
Oblast.
Russian-backed
armed groups have been in control of about a third of the area of Donetsk
Oblast since September 2014, when a peace deal between the groups and the
Ukrainian armed forces was agreed in the Belarusian capital Minsk.
The
agreement included a ceasefire and withdrawal of weapons from the front line
between the two sides, but neither condition has ever been fully respected.
After a
flare up of fighting at the end of 2014 and in early 2015, the sides met in
Minsk again to agree on a way to fulfill the previously agreed peace deal.
However, on
Feb. 18, 2015, just days after the signing of that “Minsk II” agreement on Feb.
12, the Russian-backed armed groups, allegedly with the aid of Russian regular
troops, launched an offensive to take the key strategic town of Debaltseve. The
town had been under the control of Ukrainian forces at the time a Feb. 15
ceasefire agreed in Minsk was supposed to have come into effect.
The
Ukrainian military has reported a sharp uptick in the number of attacks made on
Ukrainian positions in the Donbas conflict zone in recent weeks. It said 39
attacks were made on Dec. 21, and in prior days the number has exceeded 50 per
day – figures comparable to those seen during the period of increased
hostilities that flared up in the Donbas this summer.
Kyiv Post editor Euan MacDonald can be reached
at [email protected]
