KIEV // Russia announced on Tuesday it will recognise separatist polls in Ukraine next weekend, fuelling tensions with the country’s newly elected pro-Western leaders as they negotiate on forming a coalition government.
The rebel elections on Sunday should “go ahead as agreed,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said.
"We will of course recognise the results," he told the Izvestia daily.
Moscow rejects accusations in Kiev and Western capitals that it is behind the armed uprising in Ukraine’s industrial heartland in which some 3,700 people have been killed since April.
However, the decision to lend legitimacy to the rebels’ leadership vote was one of most overt acts of support so far for the two unrecognised “people’s republics” that insurgents are carving out in eastern Ukraine.
Senior Ukrainian foreign ministry official Dmytro Kuleba said Moscow was violating the peace deal it had itself sponsored in the Belarusian capital Minsk on September 5, ushering in an uneasy truce.
“Russia’s intentions directly contradict the Minsk accord, undermine the agreed process on de-escalation and peaceful resolution, and continue to weaken trust in it (Russia) as a reliable international partner,” Mr Kuleba said, calling the separatists “terrorists”.
The row followed an increase in ceasefire violations after Sunday’s parliamentary election, where pro-Western president Petro Poroshenko’s allies won a convincing victory.
Artillery explosions and small arms fire could be heard in the rebel-controlled city of Donetsk into the early hours of Tuesday.
Ukraine’s military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said two soldiers had been killed and two others wounded in fighting over the last day.
Troops were forced to retreat from an isolated checkpoint at the village of Smile, near Lugansk, after fighting in which 10 servicemen have died since September, Lysenko added.
“We are currently identifying bodies and searching for missing soldiers.”
Kiev and its Western backers consider the six-month uprising in the industrial Donbass region, as well as the seizure of Crimea, an attempt by Russian president Vladimir Putin to prevent Ukraine from reorientating itself towards the West.
Moscow, which has a large naval base on the strategic Crimean peninsula, says it only wants to help Russian speakers — a majority in Crimea and the east — who feel threatened by Ukrainian nationalism.
With almost 87 per cent of ballots counted from Sunday’s poll, the shape of Mr Poroshenko’s future ruling alliance was becoming clearer.
His Petro Poroshenko Bloc remained a hair behind prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front, with about 22 per cent of the vote each. The third-placed Self-Reliance party, likewise nationalist and pro-Western, confirmed reports it was considering joining a three-way coalition.
Expectations were that Mr Yatsenyuk would retain the premier’s post.
One of Mr Poroshenko’s main policies is to make peace with the separatists, granting them autonomy, though not independence. That task looked harder than ever with the rebel elections approaching and their boycott of Sunday’s poll for the national parliament.
Mr Poroshenko’s government will also face giant challenges beyond the war, including reducing corruption, tackling massive debt, and resolving a near permanent crisis over payments for Russian gas supplies.
But Western leaders, who hailed the election as a democratic milestone, have promised to stand by the embattled country of about 45 million people.
The head of the EU executive, José Manuel Barroso, called the election a “victory of democracy and European reforms”.
* Agence France-Presse