DONETSK, Ukraine — A fierce firefight broke out Monday afternoon after separatist rebels seized the main airport here, and Ukrainian government forces moved to retake control. A bombardment of the airport began shortly after noon, with smoke rising into the air. In the Kievsky neighborhood in the northern part of Donetsk, the boom of artillery startled pedestrians who scanned the skies for the source of the shelling.
Automatic gunfire tore through a grassy area and a Ukrainian soldier ran for cover as the fighting appeared to escalate. The battle over the airport was underway just as Petro O. Poroshenko, elected in a landslide on Sunday, was giving a news briefing in Kiev, where he likened the armed separatists in the east to “Somali pirates” who have created a state of perpetual lawlessness.
The burst of violence appeared to be the Ukrainian military launching an attack on separatists who had taken the airport.
A spokesman for the operation, Alexei Dmitrashkovsky, said that two SU-25 Ukrainian military jets had flown over the airport and fired warning shots. He said the planes were shot at “in a chaotic way” from the ground. Then a MIG-24 fighter plane working with two helicopters landed a group of Ukrainian soldiers on the territory of the airport. That is when the firefight began.
“Currently the territory is being cleansed,” he said by telephone. He did not say whether he was located in Donetsk. He said the operation had destroyed anti-aircraft missiles.
Mr. Poroshenko has pledged to calm the separatist violence in the east, but he also said that he would not end an antiterror operation, which the Kiev government has carried out in recent weeks with very limited success in a bid to suppress the rebels. The attack on the airport suggested a new, perhaps desperate, escalation by the militants who in recent days have appeared to lose the political support of the Kremlin, which indicated that it would respect the results of Sunday’s election.
Источник: Pro-Russian Rebels Seize Airport in Ukraine. By SABRINA TAVERNISE and DAVID M. HERSZENHORNMAY 26, 2014.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/world/europe/ukraine-election.html?hp&_r=0
Социальные закладки