DONETSK, Ukraine - Alexander Borodai, the self-proclaimed prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, claims that six separatist fighters were killed in the early morning hours on May 31 in an attempt to evacuate the bodies of comrades shot dead in a battle for the Donetsk airport on May 26.
“We tried to collect the bodies from the airport territory, but the Ukrainian army fired at the militiamen and an ambulance, killing six. The bodies of those killed are still there,” Interfax-Ukraine reported Borodai as saying.
His remarks contradict those of the Ukrainian military, which said that armed separatists had launched two fresh assaults on servicemen guarding the airport territory.
“There were two attempts to storm the Donetsk airport, at 5 [a.m.] and 7 o’clock in the morning. Illegal paramilitary forces attempted to seize the airport, but both attempts were repelled by paratroopers who are part of the counterterrorist forces,” military press officer Oleksiy Dmytrashkovsky told Interfax-Ukraine.
No Ukrainian servicemen sustained injuries during the attacks at the airport, Dmytrashkovsky said.
Borodai, however, insisted that his militiamen were simply trying to recover the bodies of their deceased comrades and not launching new assaults. Now the Donetsk People’s Republic leadership will ask the International Committee of the Red Cross to help retrieve the bodies from the airport territory, he said.
At least 50 armed separatists, including many rebels from the pro-Russian Vostok Battalion, were killed in the gun battle at Donetsk airport on May 26, Borodai told the Kyiv Post earlier in the week, adding that the number could be higher and that the Ukrainian side suffered “as many” casualties, “probably more.” However, Ukrainian authorities said that none of their servicemen were killed or wounded in the fight.
Borodai told the Kyiv Post on May 29 that 33 rebels killed were Russians. Their bodies, riddled with bullets and mangled from mortar and rocket blasts, were kept overnight in a Donetsk ice cream factory that was seized by the Vostok Battalion on May 28 before being placed in red coffins, loaded into a truck, driven across the Russian border and repatriated on May 29.
