12 August 2014

Ukrainian Army Pressing Its Attack to Take Rebel-Held City of Donetsk

Ukraine Steps Up Assault of Rebel City

Andrew E. Kramer

New York TimesAugust 11, 2014

DONETSK, Ukraine — Ukraine pressed ahead on Sunday with its military assault to stamp out pro-Russian separatists in the east of the country with its most intensive artillery bombardment of this rebel capital yet.

The attack with artillery and ground-to-ground rockets defied Russian threats to intervene here as the civilian death toll rose.

It also reinforced the Ukrainian leadership’s rejection of a cease-fire on humanitarian grounds offered on Saturday by the head of the main pro-Russian separatist group here, the Donetsk People’s Republic. The separatist leadership clarified Sunday that the cease-fire offer had covered only so-called green routes, or roads used by evacuees.

Still, Ukraine’s outright rebuff of the proposal only added to concerns that Russia would intervene with what the authorities in Moscow are calling a humanitarian mission but what European nations and the United States would view as an invasion, analysts said. Secretary of State John Kerry has cautioned Russiaagainst intervening on the “pretext” of providing aid.

Through the day on Sunday, artillery shells rained down on three districts of Donetsk, hitting a rebel checkpoint and leaving it swathed in smoke, but also striking houses, apartment buildings and the maternity ward of the city’s main hospital.

Shells killed at least one civilian in the city. Roma Pronyakin, 37, was at home with his mother, watching TV, when their living room was struck. His mother, Alla, stood on the road in a state of shock. “I had one son, and now I have none,” she said.

A pro-Ukrainian paramilitary group called the Azov battalion, one of a half-dozen such organizations positioned around the city and used for urban combat, said Sunday that its fighters had raided the Ilovaisky district of the city, but pulled back.

The Ukrainian military said it had engaged in 30 firefights with the pro-Russian separatists in the previous 24 hours.

“The terrorists who are still active in Donetsk and Luhansk regions should lay down their arms and not bring up empty conversations about cease-fires,” a Ukrainian military spokesman said in Kiev, according to Ukrinform, the state news agency.

“If they want to take initiative, it is realized in a practical way, not with words, but by raising a white flag and laying down arms,” the spokesman said. “In this case, nobody will shoot the terrorists.”

The city’s main hospital, known as Hospital No. 1, was struck Sunday by artillery fire for a second time in recent days. It has the misfortune of falling right in the center of a line of fire between Ukrainian positions outside the city and the rebel military headquarters.

Photo


Ukrainian soldiers pressed ahead with their campaign to stamp out pro-Russia separatists in the east of the country with a bombardment of the rebel capital, Donetsk. Credit Roman Pilipey/European Pressphoto Agency

In the previous strike on the hospital, on Thursday, shells hit the dental ward,killing one patient, destroying a pediatric wing and sending people running into the street midway through their dental work.

On Sunday, the explosions and flying shrapnel blew out windows in the maternity ward. Tragedy was averted only because the deputy head doctor, Marina Ovsyanik, had evacuated 52 new and expecting mothers into the basement the night before, even though one woman was already in labor. She gave birth to a healthy boy in the basement, Dr. Ovsyanik said.

As Larisa Faleyeva cradled her 4-day-old daughter at the hospital, she said she thought these early traumatic days of conflict would bring the girl a special fate in life. “I hope and ask God to give her a peaceful life,” she said.

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