If Rebels Won’t Stop Attacks, Ukrainian Military Will Not Withdraw Heavy Weapons

Karoun Demirijian and Daniela Deane 

February 23, 2015

Ukrainian military says it won’t pull back until rebels attack stop

KIEV — The Ukrainian military said Monday it will not pull back its heavy weapons from the front-line until separatist rebels completely stop attacking them.

Continuing rebel attacks in the country’s embattled east are preventing a withdrawal of heavy weapons, a key component of a cease-fire deal which went into effect Feb. 15, Lt. Col. Anatoliy Stelmakh told reporters Monday.

Stelmakh said there were two artillery attacks overnight and although much fewer than in previous days, “as long as firing on Ukrainian military positions continues, it’s not possible to talk about a pullback.”

Under the internationally-brokered peace deal reached in Minsk, Belarus two weeks ago, both sides are due to withdraw their heavy weapons from the front line to create a buffer zone. Ukrainian officials said Sunday they were planning to begin the withdrawal.

The statement came one day after a bomb killed two people Sunday at a march in the city of Kharkiv commemorating the first anniversary of the ouster of Ukrainian former president Viktor Yanu­kovych. Ukrainian officials said Russia was behind the attack.

Yanukovych had enjoyed the Kremlin’s favor, and when he fled from Kiev a year ago in the face of the huge protests on the Maidan, or Independence Square, that set in motion Moscow’s seizure of Crimea and the beginning of the separatist fighting in the eastern part of the country.

The attack is the latest in a string of bombings in Kharkiv over the past few months, including explosions outside a courthouse that injured 14 last month, outside a national guard outpost, near a military hospital and at a bar frequented by Kiev supporters. Kharkiv is about 90 miles northwest of the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which pro-Russian separatists are seeking to claim as republics independent from Kiev. It was where Yanukovych made a brief stop on his flight into exile in Russia.

Ukrainian officials called the bombing an act of terrorism.

Markian Lubkivskyi, a spokesman for the national Security Service, said that the alleged perpetrators of Sunday’s bombing had been trained in Russia and that their bomb had been made in Russia.

The Kremlin did not comment on the Kharkiv attack Sunday, but in the past, Russia has denied any direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

The cease-fire’s efficacy has been in doubt since it was signed two weeks ago, as fighting in the key transport hub of Debaltseve only increased in the days after the agreement was struck. Pro-Kiev forces retreated from the city last week.

Pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian military did swap prisoners Saturday, an event officials on both sides of the conflict suggested could be followed by another exchange soon.

But military officials in Mariupol, a strategic port on the Sea of Azov, reported Sunday that rebels had launched an offensive to the east of the city.

Meanwhile, European leaders appeared with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at events commemorating the Maidan anniversary in Kiev on Sunday, where the European Council president, Donald Tusk, suggested that Europe would soon revisit the subject of broadening economic sanctions against Russia.