You're reading: Seven Ukrainian soldiers killed in attack by Kremlin-backed insurgents on Donetsk airport; at least 12 people killed in last day

The cease-fire looked ever more tenuous on Sept. 29, as Kremlin-backed insurgents tried to take over Donetsk airport on the night of Sept. 28. Seven Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the attack.

Overall, the Ukrainian army lost nine soldiers in the last 24 hours, according to government spokesman Andriy Lysenko, while 27 soldiers have been wounded.

Nine of the injured came when the separatists attacked a Ukrainian armored personnel carrier, according to Yuri Biriukov, one of President Petro Poroshenko’s advisers. Meanwhile, at least three civilians were killed in Donetsk overnight, bringing the death toll to at least 12 in the last day.

Despite the casualities, the ruined and closed Donetsk airport remains under control of the Ukrainian army, who repelled the attack and destroyed three tanks and killed 50 insurgents, Lysenko, the spokesman for National Defence and Security Council said.

After Ukraine’s military forces blew up the runway of Luhansk airport and left it in September, making its use impossible, they have been defending the Donetsk airport, which is located just 9.4 kilometers from the city center. 

Unlike the airport in Luhansk, the Ukrainian army has is better positioned to retain control over Donetsk — the provincial capital with a pre-war population of more than 1 million people — because it controls many nearby neighborhoods, Vyacheslav Tseluiko, an expert of the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarment Studies told the Kyiv Post.

Ukrainian billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky, the Dnipropertrovsk Oblast governor, thinks that the Ukrainian army might give up the aiport soon and settle for territory south of Donetsk in return. According to his Sept. 28 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Kolomoisky said: “The airport is more important to them than it is to us,” he said.

But if the Ukrainian army pulls back and leaves the airport, it remains unusable, Tseluiko said. “It will take a lot of time and resources to rebuild the airport. But the main thing is that there is no point of restoring the airport, which is located on the front line. It will be under fire anyway, so using it for its intended purpose will be problematic,” Tseluiko said.

The once-new and fancy airport cost $750 million, most of which came from the state budget as part of the preparations for the Euro 2012 football tournament. It was severely damaged on May 26, when it was seized by illegal armed insurgents. Ukrainian authorities regained control, but it has remained under the constant threat of takeover. There were several attempts to attack Ukrainian soldiers and retake the airport in July, August and September, but Ukrainian servicemen fended off the attacks.

Overall, Ukraine is seeking more than $100 billion from Russia in various international courts for compensation to losses suffered in the Kremlin-backed war in eastern Ukraine and the theft of the Crimean peninsula.

Kyiv Post staff writer Anastasia Forina can be reached at [email protected]