Ukraine says peace hopes 'destroyed' as rebels assault town

Yulia Novomlynets waits in a line to receive the humanitarian aid in the local Palace of Culture which is used as a bomb shelter in Mironovka village, near Debaltsev of Donetsk area, Ukraine, on FebruShow more

SOLEDAR, UKRAINE // Ukraine on Tuesday accused rebels and Russia of destroying a fragile three-day-old ceasefire after insurgents armed with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a flashpoint town and engaged thousands of troops there in intense combat.

“The hopes of the world for peace are being destroyed,” the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Valeriy Chaly, said.

“Russia and the DNR [the rebels’ self-styled breakaway Donetsk republic] are not abiding by the agreement” underpinning the truce, he said.

He warned that the situation was careening towards “further escalation”.

Fierce fighting was raging in the streets of Debaltseve, a strategic railway hub between the main rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Lugansk, according to both Kiev officials and pro-Russian rebels.

“Street battles are continuing and the rebels are attacking the town in groups with support from artillery and heavy armour,” the Ukraine defence ministry said.

“Part of the town has been captured by the bandits.”

Rebels said their fighters rushed in from the north and the east of Debaltseve and had taken its vital railway station. Many of the Ukrainian troops were killed and taken prisoner, they claimed.

Some 80 per cent of the town was now in rebel hands, said the “defence minister” of the separatist Donetsk republic, Vladimir Kononov.

Ukrainian officials denied the rebel casualty and prisoner claims, but admitted that an unspecified number of soldiers in an ambushed supply convoy were seized after a battle outside Debaltseve on Monday. They also said 10 soldiers had been killed since the start of the truce on Sunday, several of them in or around Debaltseve.

Russia and the rebels claim some 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers are in the town, and thousands of trapped civilians are cowering in cellars with little food or water.

“There are wounded and killed but we cannot confirm the numbers yet as the battles are still continuing,” said Ilya Kiva, a Kiev-loyal deputy regional police chief inside the town.

Up until Tuesday, the heavily armed rebels who had all but surrounded Debaltseve had been pounding it with rockets and mortars.

The separatists have for days blocked access to the town to journalists and monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe seeking to enter to verify conditions. OSCE representatives could not get to Debaltseve on Monday because of the heavy fighting there.

Tuesday’s combat dealt a harsh blow to the shaky, European-mediated ceasefire.

Both sides have refused to pull back their heavy weapons all along the frontline in Ukraine’s east because of what each said was violations of the truce by the other, as agreed upon during last week’s peace talks in Belarus between the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France.

The Ukrainian presidential office on Tuesday called on the European Union and Nato to condemn the Russia-backed rebels for violating the ceasefire after the rebels claimed to have taken Debaltseve.

Russian news agencies quoted Valery Chaly, chief of the Ukrainian presidential administration, as saying that Kiev wants the EU and Nato to “resolutely condemn” the separatists for violating the deals brokered by European leaders last week.

In a phone call late on Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko appealed to Russian president Vladimir Putin to use his influence on the separatists to ensure that they stop the fighting.

Ms Merkel’s office reported that the three leaders agreed on “concrete steps to enable an observation” of the situation in Debaltseve by the OSCE. It did not elaborate on what these steps would be.

* Agence France-Presse, additional reporting from the Associated Press