Ukraine's Poroshenko Accuses Russia of 'Open Aggression'
September 01, 2014
by VOA News
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia on Monday of “direct and open aggression” against his country.
Speaking at a military academy in Kyiv, he said Russia's direct involvement in the war against the separatists in eastern Ukraine had tipped the balance on the battlefield and was the main reason for recent reversals.
"Direct and open aggression has been launched against Ukraine from a neighboring state. This has changed the situation in the zone of conflict in a radical way," he said.
Meanwhile in London, British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday called the presence of Russian troops on Ukrainian soil “unjustified and unacceptable.”
"Russia appears to be trying to force Ukraine to abandon its democratic choices at the barrel of a gun," Cameron told parliament, warning Moscow its relationship with the rest of the world would be "radically different" in future if it continued with its current policy on Ukraine.
EU threatens new sanctions
Over the weekend, European Union leaders, meeting in Brussels, called on Russia to "immediately withdraw all its military assets and forces from Ukraine" or face a new round of sanctions within a week.
Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged on Monday that enacting further punitive measures against Russia could hit the German economy, but said that doing nothing in response to Moscow's aggression in Ukraine was “not an option.”
“I have said that [sanctions] can have an impact, also for German companies,” Merkel told a news conference in Berlin. “But I have to say there is also an impact when you are allowed to move borders in Europe and attack other countries with your troops,” she added.
“Accepting Russia's behavior is not an option," said Merkel.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a visit to Siberia, urged the EU on Monday to show "common sense" and not to resort to mutually destructive sanctions, in his first reaction to the threat of additional punitive measures over Ukraine.
Ukraine forces pull back
Ukrainian troops retreated from the Luhansk airport and a nearby village in the east on Monday after coming under artillery fire, said Andriy Lysenko, Kyiv's security spokesman.
"Ukrainian soldiers received an order and made an organized retreat from the Luhansk airport and Georgiyivka village," Lysenko said. "Judging by the precision of the strikes, professional artillery men of the Russian armed forces are the ones firing."
Lysenko said seven Ukrainian service personnel had been killed in the past 24 hours.
Luhansk airport and Georgiyivka are located several kilometers south of the rebel stronghold Luhansk.
Also on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said talks meant to ease the Ukraine crisis being held in Belarus should focus on an immediate, unconditional cease-fire between the Kyiv government and separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The meeting in Minsk involves representatives of Russia, Ukraine, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Russia's Interfax news agency reported leaders of the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed "people's republics" will demand that Kyiv recognize a "special status" for the two territories and end its military operation in eastern Ukraine.
NATO estimates there are at least 1,000 Russian troops present inside Ukraine, and European Union leaders have demanded that Russia immediately withdraw its forces from the country.
Russia has repeatedly denied it has any troops in Ukraine.
Further violence
Ukrainian coastguards searched for two seamen missing after one of their patrol boats was sunk in the Sea of Azov by artillery fire from pro-Russian separatists on the shore. Eight other seamen survived Sunday's attack and were being treated for wounds and burns, a border guard official said.
Elsewhere, several hundred Ukrainian forces are bogged down near Ilovaysk, east of the region's main city of Donetsk, and have been trying to break out of encirclement by Russian-backed separatists for several days.
Until last week Ukraine had appeared close to crushing the four-month rebellion in the east, which erupted after a pro-Moscow president was forced out of power by popular protests. But then the rebels opened a new front to the south on the coast of the Sea of Azov, pushing toward the city of Mariupol.
Poroshenko repeated Kyiv's belief that Russian forces are helping the rebels to turn the tide of the war.
Poroshenko said there would be high-level personnel changes in the Ukrainian armed forces, whose troops fled a new rebel advance in the south which Kyiv's Western allies say has been backed up by Russian armored columns.
Putin repeated his call for face-to-face talks between Kyiv and the separatists. “The current Kyiv leadership does not want to carry out a substantive political dialog with the east of its country,” state news agency Itar-Tass cited him as telling journalists.
EU considers sanctions
The European Union's newly nominated foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Putin's Ukraine policy had resulted in economic sanctions that were hurting his own people.
Speaking in her first newspaper interview since being tapped for the job on Saturday, Mogherini told Italy's Corriere della Sera on Monday that sanctions remained “a tool” in brokering what had to be a diplomatic resolution to the Ukraine fighting.
“The point is whether the impact that the sanctions are having on the Russian economy will change the rational behavior of the leadership,” she said. “At the moment, the Kremlin is acting against the interests of its people.”
The EU, along with the United States, first imposed sanctions on Moscow in March for annexing Crimea, and imposed trade restrictions on Russia's financial and oil industries after a Malaysian airliner was shot down in July over separatist territory in the Ukraine, killing nearly 300 people, most of them Dutch.
Mogherini's comments, unusually blunt for the 41-year-old who is currently Italy's foreign minister, come after critics to her nomination said she may be soft on Moscow because of Italy's dependence on Russian gas.
Fears over 'statehood' comments
They also signal increased concern in Europe after Putin called on Sunday for immediate talks on the “statehood” of southern and eastern Ukraine.
Mogherini said Putin's statement could “further undermine the territorial integrity, the very endurance of the country” and accused the leader of being an unreliable diplomatic counterpart.
“Putin has never respected the commitments he made in several situations, in Geneva, in Normandy, in Berlin. He wasted the chance to turn things around by influencing the separatists after the shooting down of the Malaysian airplane. The distance between commitments and concrete action has been enormous,” she said.
Also Monday, NATO Secretary-General Ander Fogh Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels that the parliament to be elected in Ukraine's upcoming parliamentary elections is likely to change the country's "non-alliance status," a possible first step toward applying to join the Western military alliance.
School year starts
Despite raging conflict in the area, children in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk attended their first day of school on Monday.
Young students in uniform and traditionally embroidered items of clothing attended a school assembly, handing flowers to their teachers, before walking to their classes in groups.
Head teacher at the school, Aleksandr Pastukhov, said he hoped the new school year would herald peace.
Asked to what extent the school had been affected by ongoing tensions in the east, Pastukhov said some 38 children had not returned for classes and their families could not be reached by telephone, suggesting many had fled Slovyansk.
"Five teachers have left our so called school family. But as of today we found replacement," he added.
Some information for this report provided by Reuters, AP and AFP.
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