Ukraine Says It Attacked Russian Armored Column Near Border
by VOA News August 15, 2014
The Ukrainian government says its troops have destroyed military vehicles that crossed the border from Russia into eastern Ukraine.
The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced the news Friday on the presidential website. It said Ukraine destroyed a 'significant' portion of the military column.
British media had reported early Friday that a large column of Russian armored personnel carriers and other vehicles crossed the border into Ukraine. At a subsequent news conference, NATO leader Anders Fogh Rasmussen confirmed the sighting of 'a Russian incursion."
'It is a clear demonstration of continued Russian involvement in the destabilization of eastern Ukraine," NATO's Rasmussen said, according to the news agency AFP. He was speaking from Copenhagen, where he'd met with Denmark's defense minister.
Ukraine had reported that a column of armored personnel carriers and trucks had come across the border into its eastern region Thursday, an allegation the Kremlin had denied.
Rasmussen said the overnight sighting 'just confirms the fact that we see a continued flow of weapons and fighters from Russia into the eastern Ukraine.'
In a statement Friday, European Union foreign ministers said any unilateral military action by Russia in Ukraine would be considered "a blatant violation of international law," Reuters reported.
The statement by the ministers, meeting in Brussels, said Russia should 'put an immediate stop to any form of border hostilities, in particular to the flow of arms, military advisers, and armed personnel into the conflict region, and to withdraw its forces from the border."
A United Nations spokesman, Farhan Haq, said officials there 'were aware of the reports in Ukraine, which we cannot verify independently, and will follow related developments very carefully.
'Such reports point to the urgent need for immediate de-escalation and a resolution of the conflict through dialogue,' Haq said.
Concerns about convoy
Before the attack, Ukrainian officials had begun inspecting a Russian convoy of at least 200 trucks that Moscow said is carrying humanitarian aid for war-torn eastern Ukraine. The Poroshenko government was concerned Moscow might try to use the convoy to launch a secret invasion or to re-arm pro-Russian rebels who have suffered recent losses.
Russia has denied directly arming the rebels, saying the convoy is only aimed at helping alleviate suffering in eastern Ukraine.
International relief officials say much of eastern Ukraine, including the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, lack medical supplies, water and electricity, as Ukrainian government forces press their offensive aimed at ending the rebellion by pro-Russian separatists.
Senior pro-Russian separatists quit
Meanwhile, two of the most senior pro-Russian separatists battling Ukraine forces near the Russian border quit Thursday, as Ukrainian troops pummeled locations near the rebel-held cities of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Artillery shells struck the center of Donetsk for the first time since rebels launched their rebellion against Ukrainian rule in April. Western news reports say at least 25 people were killed in the Donetsk shelling, while Ukraine reported nine troops killed.
The departures of Russian nationals Igor Strelkov and Valery Bolotov came as Russian President Vladimir Putin met Thursday with Russian lawmakers in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine and annexed earlier this year.
Putin seeks to reassure Crimeans
Putin said that eastern Ukraine had been plunged into 'bloody chaos and murder' and that 'a large-scale humanitarian disaster' is unfolding there. He said Russia would do everything in its power to 'ensure that this conflict is ended as quickly as possible, so that blood stops flowing in Ukraine.'
He also said Russia should not fence itself off from the outside world, and 'consolidate and mobilize but not for war or any kind of confrontation.''
VOA's Margaret Besheer contributed to this report from the United Nations. Some information was provided by AFP, the Associated Press and Reuters.
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