Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion On A New Front

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Determined to preserve the pro-Russian revolt in eastern Ukraine, Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday, sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory. The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week, further blunting the momentum Ukrainian forces have made in weakening the insurgents in their redoubts of Donetsk and Luhansk farther north. Evidence of a possible turn was seen in the panicky retreat of Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday from a force they said had come over the Russian border. Russia, which has denied it is helping the insurgents, did not acknowledge the military movements. But the Russians have signaled that they would not countenance a defeat of an insurgency in the heavily Russian eastern part of Ukraine, which would amount to a significant domestic political setback for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in his increasingly fractious relationship with the United States and its European allies. “Russia is clearly trying to put its finger on the scale to tip things back in favor of its proxies,” a senior American official said. “Artillery barrages and other Russian military actions have taken their toll on the Ukrainian military.” The Russian military movements carried the potential to poison any hope that a halt to the five-month-old conflict was any closer, one day after the presidents of both countries, at a summit meeting in Belarus, outwardly professed their desire for a solution. Russia’s behavior also raised the possibility of punitive new Western economic sanctions as a reprisal step. Colonel Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military in Kiev, said the Russian armored column entered the town of Amvrosiyivka, south of Donetsk, expanding what Western and Ukrainian officials have described as one of the main fronts in a multipronged, Russia-directed counteroffensive. This week, Ukraine accused Russia of sending an armored column toward the coastal city of Mariupol, far from the fighting around Luhansk and Donetsk, with the aim of diverting Ukrainian forces to deal with that new threat. The Obama administration accused Russia of lying about its intentions, while European officials angrily demanded answers from the Kremlin. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who perhaps has the most cordial relationship with Putin, telephoned him on Wednesday to request an explanation, her office said. Evidence that Russia was seeking to change the course of the conflict was abundant this week in the small southeast border town of Novoazovsk, where Ukrainian forces beat a nervous retreat on Tuesday, under attack from what fleeing soldiers described as columns of tanks, artillery and combat troops coming across the border. Exhausted, filthy and dismayed, some Ukrainian soldiers staggering out of Novoazovsk for safer territory said they were cannon fodder for the attacking forces. As they spoke, tank shells whistled in from the east and exploded nearby. Some of the Ukrainian soldiers appeared unwilling to fight. The commander of their unit, part of the Ninth Brigade from Vinnytsia, in western Ukraine, barked at the men to turn around, to no effect. “All right,” the commander said. “Anybody who refuses to fight, sit apart from the others.” Eleven men did, while the others returned to the city. Some troops were in full retreat. A city-busload of them careened past on the highway headed west, as purple curtains flapped through windows shot out by gunfire. More fighting and shelling punctuated the area around the town on Wednesday, although it was unclear whether the assailants were Russian forces or members of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the name the separatists have given themselves. The Obama administration, which has imposed increasingly punitive economic sanctions on Russia because of the Ukraine crisis, has asserted over the past week that the Russians had moved artillery, air-defense systems and armor to help the separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. “These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway,” Jen Psaki, the State Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday. At the department’s daily briefing in Washington, Ms. Psaki also criticized what she called the Russian government’s “unwillingness to tell the truth” that its military had sent soldiers as deep as 30 miles inside Ukraine territory. Ms. Psaki apparently was referring to videos of captured Russian soldiers, distributed by the Ukrainian government on Tuesday, that directly challenged Putin’s assertions that Russia is a mere bystander in the conflict. The videos were publicized just as Putin was meeting with his Ukraine counterpart, Petro O. Poroshenko, in Belarus. Russian forces have been trying to help the separatists break the siege of Luhansk and have been fighting to open a corridor to Donetsk from the Russian border, Western officials say. To the south, Russia has been backing a separatist push toward Mariupol, a major port on the Sea of Azov, according to Western and Ukrainian officials. The Russian aim, one Western official said, may possibly be to seize an outlet to the sea in the event that Russia tries to establish a separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine. Some Western officials fear the move might even be a step in what they suspect is a broader Russian strategy to carve out a land link to Crimea, the strategic Ukrainian peninsula that Russia annexed in March, setting off Moscow’s worst crisis with the West since the Cold War. The Russian military’s use of artillery from within Ukraine is of special concern to Western military officials, who say Russian artillery has already been used to shell Ukrainian forces near Luhansk. And along with the antiaircraft systems operated by separatists or Russian forces inside Ukraine, the artillery has the potential to alter the balance of power in the struggle for control of eastern Ukraine. The separatists have asserted that they are using captured Ukrainian equipment. But American officials say they are confident that the artillery in the Krasnodon area of Ukraine is Russia’s since Ukrainian forces have not penetrated that deeply into that separatist-controlled region. American officials also say the separatists have no experience in using such weaponry. The United States has photographs that show the Russian artillery moved into Ukraine, American officials say. One photo dated Aug. 21, shown to a New York Times reporter, shows Russian military units moving self-propelled artillery into Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday, shows the artillery in firing positions in Ukraine. Advanced air defenses, including systems not known to be in the Ukrainian arsenal, have also been used to blunt the Ukrainian military’s air power, American officials say. In addition, they said, the Russian military routinely flies drones over Ukraine and shares the intelligence with the separatists. In Novoazovsk, at least, there was no doubt among the retreating Ukrainians that their assailants were coming from Russia. On the highway in Novoazovsk on Tuesday, Sgt. Ihor Sharapov, a soldier with the Ukrainian border patrol unit, said he had seen tanks drive across the border, although they were marked with flags of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Others suggested the flags were a ruse. “I tell you they are Russians, but this is what proof I have,” said Sgt. Aleksei Panko, holding up his thumb and index finger to form a zero. Sergeant Panko estimated that about 60 armored vehicles crossed near Novoazovsk. “This is what happened: They crossed the border, took up positions and started shooting.” The Ukrainian Vinnytsia brigade met the cross-border advance over the six miles of countryside separating Novoazovsk from the Russian border, but later retreated to the western edge of town along the Rostov-Mariupol highway, where soldiers were collapsed in exhaustion on the roadside. “This is now a war with Russia,” Sergeant Panko said. The counteroffensive that Ukrainian officers said was at least in part staged across the border from Russia pushed the Ukrainian Army off a 75-mile-long highway from Donetsk south to the Azov Sea. On Wednesday, it amounted to a no-man’s land of empty villages, roads crisscrossed by armored vehicle treads, felled trees and grass fires burning out of control, and panoramas of sunflowers and corn rotting.

Ukraine Accuses Russia Of Invasion

MOSCOW, Russia -- Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko accused Russia of invading the country Thursday, apparently dashing hopes of a diplomatic response to the crisis and challenging the West to respond. Kiev said Russian forces have seized the coastal town of Novoazovsk and several villages near the border with Russia, part of a wider assault on a new front. Mr. Poroshenko called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council and the European Council to respond to what said was "the introduction of Russian forces into Ukraine." He canceled a planned trip to Turkey and set an emergency meeting with his security chiefs for later in the day. "The world needs to pay attention to the sharply worsening situation in Ukraine," he said in a televised statement from Kiev. Russia's ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Andrey Kelin, denied the accusation. The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed claims its forces are fighting in Ukraine. Western capitals have grown increasingly alarmed. France's President François Hollande said Russia would suffer a new round of sanctions if the Kremlin failed to stop the supply of arms to pro-Russian separatists and didn't respect Ukraine's sovereignty. "Russia cannot simultaneously aspire to be a world power in the 21st century and not play by the rules," the president said in a speech to French ambassadors. Lithuania's foreign ministry called the attack an "obvious invasion of the territory of Ukraine by the armed forces of the Russian Federation." The U.S. ambassador to Kiev also issued a definitive statement Thursday that Russia was now directly involved in fighting. The ambassador, George Pyatt, tweeted that "now an increasing number of Russian troops are intervening directly in fighting on Ukrainian territory." He noted that "Russia has also sent its newest air defense systems including the SA-22 into eastern Ukraine and is now directly involved in the fighting." The advance comes as a leader of separatist rebels in Ukraine confirmed for the first time that Russian active duty military are fighting in Ukraine—although he insisted the fighters were in the country for short stints, while on vacation. "I'll say openly that fighting among us are active military who prefer not to spend a holiday on the beach," Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk Peoples' Republic, said in an interview on Russia television. "They are among us brothers who are fighting for their freedom." Russia has repeatedly brushed off all allegations that it is aiding separatists or sending its troops there. Most recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russian paratroopers Ukraine said crossed the border must have wandered there "by accident." After falling back before the advance in the southeast, Ukrainian troops are now digging in near the strategically important port city of Mariupol. Russia's Interfax news agency cited pro-Russian rebels as saying they will be taking the city "in the coming days." Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council said Thursday the assault on Novoazovsk on Wednesday was preceded by missile fire from across the Russian border, followed by the incursion of "two columns of Russian military equipment." The Council said "Russian forces" had taken control of Novoazovsk and surrounding villages, as well as villages further north, toward Donetsk. The Council didn't provide proof for its claim, however. NATO has a briefing scheduled for Thursday in which it is expected give fresh evidence of Russian forces directing military operations inside Ukraine. Until recently Ukrainian troops had the upper hand against rebels, pushing them back towards the Russian border and nearly surrounding strongholds in the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk. But in the past week Ukrainian defenses have crumbled under counter-attacks, amid reports that Russia was rushing troops and armor into the country into rebel-held areas. Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk called on Western countries to take harsher economic steps against Russia to help Ukraine fight off "Russian aggression." He said that sanctions taken up by the U.S. and the European Union have not been sufficient, and called on them and G-7 nations to "freeze all the Russian assets and to stop all the financial transactions of the Russian Federation… until Russia pulls out its military forces, armory and agents" from Ukraine. Anton Herashchenko, an advisor to Ukraine's defense minister wrote on his Facebook page that "to stop Putin, EU countries, and first and foremost Germany, must make a decision to give up buying oil, gas, timber and other natural resources from Russia," he wrote. "Stop issuing any kinds of loans or better freeze the assets of Russian state companies as sponsors of terrorism." "This will immediately put Putin on the brink of economic abyss which will sooner or later be followed by a political abyss," he added.

Russians Troops Fighting In Ukraine? Naw. They’re Just On ‘Vacation.’

DONETSK, Ukraine -- A separatist leader in Eastern Ukraine has a secret he’d like to share. There are Russian troops inside Ukraine fighting alongside the rebels and against Ukrainian troops. But wait. They’re really just freelancing while on vacation, according to his comment in a Reuters report. “Among us are fighting serving [Russian] soldiers, who would rather take their vacation not on a beach but with us, among brothers, who are fighting for their freedom,” Alexander Zakharchenko said in a reported interview with a Russian state television station. Except for the Russian government itself, who continues to make up outrageous lies, they’re not even pretending anymore. Though don’t tell the Russians that. Just this week, after being confronted with video evidence that appeared to contradict their story, they maintained the charade. Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, agreed this morning that Russian troops have now entered the fight. “Russian supplied tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and multiple rocket launchers have been insufficient to defeat Ukraine’s armed forces,” he wrote. “So now an increasing number of Russian troops are intervening directly in fighting on Ukrainian territory. Russia has also sent its newest air defense systems including the SA-22 into eastern Ukraine and is now directly involved in the fighting.” This comes after Tuesday’s news that ten Russian paratroopers were caught in Ukraine. The soldiers quickly conceded in a video that a) they were Russian, and b) they had been ordered to cross the border. The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, said they’d wandered across the border 'accidentally'. “The soldiers really did participate in a patrol of a section of the Russian-Ukrainian border, crossed it by accident on an unmarked section, and as far as we understand showed no resistance to the armed forces of Ukraine when they were detained,” the Guardian quoted one Russian defense ministry source saying. This of course wasn’t the first time Russia has walked back or denied something that directly challenged the veracity of their purported non-involvement. After the Malaysian Airlines plane was shot down, with a weapon that was Russian-made, U.S. officials accused Russia of shooting artillery across the border and into Ukraine, Reuters reported. “We have new evidence that the Russians intend to deliver heavier and more powerful multiple rocket launchers to separatist forces in Ukraine, and have evidence that Russia is firing artillery from within Russia to attack Ukrainian military positions,” State Department spokesman Marie Harf said. What evidence? Geoffrey Pyatt tweeted out several satellite images showing the artillery strikes. Then NATO said it spotted Russia sending an “incursion” into Ukraine. “Last night we saw a Russian incursion, a crossing of the Ukrainian border,” said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, according to Reuters. “It just confirms the fact that we see a continuous flow of weapons and fighters from Russia into eastern Ukraine and it is a clear demonstration of continued Russian involvement.” Russia’s response to such accusations: denial. “We no longer pay attention to the allegations made by Mr. Rasmussen and his press secretary,” a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said. “There is no sense to comment on them.” But as the fighting threatens to balloon into a full-blown war between Ukraine and Russia, it may become more difficult to maintain the rhetorical sleight of hand. On Thursday morning, Reuters’ Richard Balmforth was suspicious after separatist forces reportedly took more strategic ground near the rebel-held city of Donetsk. “The sudden reverses for the Ukrainian military appeared to confirm the arrival of Russian forces to support the separatists,” he wrote, quoting a local soldier fighting for the Ukrainian government. “There is military equipment … which came across the border two days ago from Russia,” he said. “The equipment is carrying the flags of the [Donetsk People's Republic], but they are regular Russian forces.”

U.S. Says Russia Has 'Outright Lied' About Ukraine

UNITED NATIONS, USA -- The United States told an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday that Russia has "outright lied" over its military activity inside Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting Ukrainian armed forces. he accusation came hours before President Obama said the United States "is not taking military action to solve the Ukrainian problem" but trying to mobilize international pressure on Moscow. "Russian soldiers, tanks and air defense have supported and fight alongside separatists as they open a new front in a crisis manufactured and fueled by Russia," Samantha Power, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told the council. She noted that it was not the first time Russia has been called by the council to account for its activities inside Ukraine. "At every step, Russia has come before this council to say everything but the truth," Power said. "It has manipulated, obfuscated and outright lied." In response, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said, "Everyone knows there are Russian volunteers in eastern Ukraine. No one is hiding it." He said the conflict was Ukraine's fault, calling it the "direct consequence of the reckless policy of Kiev, which is conducting a war against its own people." Rather than blame Russia, he said, the United States should "restrain your geopolitical ambitions. Countries around the world would breathe a sigh of relief." The Ukrainian envoy, Oleksandr Pavlichenko, accused Russia of intentionally undermining peace efforts. Churkin asked if Kiev's demand for separatists to disarm was an attempt to provoke more violence. Pavlichenko replied that Kiev is "ready to engage on a whole range of issues" and the only non-negotiable issues are Ukraine's sovereignty, territorial integrity and its "European aspirations." At the White House, Obama ruled out a U.S. military response. "It is not in the cards for us to see a military confrontation between Russia and the United States in this region," he said during a 30-minute news conference. He said he did not see the moves of the past week as an invasion but "a continuation of what's been taking place for months now ... not really a shift." "This is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine," he said. "The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia. ... We've seen deep Russian involvement in everything they've done." He echoed Ukrainian claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin has rejected attempts to resolve the conflict peacefully. "We have not seen any meaningful action on the part of Russia to actually try to resolve this in a diplomatic fashion," Obama said. He spoke earlier in the day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel about the Russian incursion, and both agreed the United States and European Union would have to consider expanding sanctions on Moscow, the White House said in a statement. The U.N. Security Council convened the emergency meeting hours after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who will meet with Obama at the White House next month, declared that "Russian forces have entered Ukraine" in support of separatist rebels. The meeting, called by Lithuania, followed charges Thursday by NATO officials of a significant increase of Russian military activity — including evidence of combat soldiers — in eastern Ukraine. Russia has strongly denied such allegations. "Russia has to stop lying and has to stop fueling this conflict," Power said. "The mask is coming off. In these recent acts, we see Russia's actions for what they are — a deliberate effort to support and now fight alongside illegal separatists in another sovereign country." Power said Russia's actions in the past 48 hours "have spoken volumes," and she called on the Security Council to take immediate action. "How can we tell those countries that border Russia that their peace and sovereignty is guaranteed if we do not make our message heard on Ukraine?" she asked the council. "The cost of inaction is unacceptable." Jeffrey Feltman, U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, opened the Security Council meeting by saying its immediate focus "must be to find ways to reverse the dangerous escalation of fighting that has occurred over the past 24 hours and move quickly away from armed conflict and toward political solutions and dialogue." Ukraine has charged that at least two convoys of Russian military equipment entered southeastern Ukraine this week to open up a third front in the fighting between Ukrainian armed forces and Russian-backed separatists in eastern regions. More than 2,000 people have died in clashes in eastern Ukraine, according to a recent U.N. report. Russian-backed rebels have declared two regions as independent republics and the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk have been largely surrounded by Ukrainian forces. Poroshenko, who discussed the crisis with Putin two days ago, called for U.N. action in a televised statement to the nation, saying, "The world must provide assessment of sharp aggravation of the situation in Ukraine." "Russian military boots are on Russian ground," said Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk., who also appealed to the United Nations for a response to a "growing military threat from Russia." In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron said there is "mounting evidence that Russian troops have made large-scale incursions" into southeastern Ukraine. Such actions are "completely unacceptable and illegal," he said, urging Russia to find a political solution to the crisis, or "there will be further consequences." In Brussels, Brig. Gen. Nico Tak said at NATO headquarters Thursday that the alliance noted a "significant escalation in both the level and sophistication of Russia's military interference in Ukraine" in the past two weeks. "Russia is reinforcing and resupplying separatist forces in a blatant attempt to change the momentum of the fighting, which is currently favoring the Ukrainian military," Tak said. NATO produced satellite images as "additional evidence that Russian combat soldiers, equipped with sophisticated heavy weaponry, are operating inside Ukraine's sovereign territory." Geoffrey Pyatt, U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, wrote on Twitter that Russian troops are directly intervening in Ukraine because of a flagging military effort by rebels. "Russian-supplied tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and multiple rocket launchers have been insufficient to defeat Ukraine' armed forces," Pyatt wrote. "So now an increasing number of Russian troops are intervening directly in fighting on Ukrainian territory. " As charges of a Russian incursion mounted, Andrey Kelin, Russia's representative to the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has an international monitoring group in Ukraine, denied the allegations. "We have said that no Russian involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment," he said, the Russian news agency ITAR-Tass reported. "Accusations relating to convoys of armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and the week before that," he said. "All of them were proven false back then and are being proven false again now." Ukraine said this week that it had captured 10 Russian paratroopers who had crossed into Ukraine and showed video of some of the men being interviewed. Putin suggested the soldiers crossed the unmarked border by accident while on training exercises. After his meeting with Poroshenko in Belarus, Putin said a possible cease-fire plan did not come up. He said a solution to the crisis in eastern Ukraine is "not our business; it is a domestic matter for Ukraine itself." He said all Russia could do was "support the creation of an environment of trust." A pro-Russian leader conceded that as many as 4,000 Russian citizens are fighting alongside the rebels but are doing so strictly voluntarily. "Many former high-ranking military officers have volunteered to join us. They are fighting with us, considering that to be their duty," Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic in Ukraine, told Russian TV, the BBC reports. "There are also many in the current Russian military that prefer to spend their leave among us, brothers who are fighting for their freedom, rather than on a beach," Zakharchenko said. In Mariupol, a city of 450,000, a brigade of Ukrainian forces arrived at the airport, while deep trenches were dug a day earlier on the city's edge. In Donetsk, the largest rebel-held city, 11 people were killed by shelling during the night, the city administration said in a statement. "These incursions indicate a Russian-directed counteroffensive is likely underway in Donetsk and Luhansk," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. She voiced concern about overnight deliveries of materiel in southeast Ukraine near Novoazovsk and said Russia was being dishonest about its actions, even to its own people. Russian forces, she said, are being sent 30 miles inside Ukraine, without them or their families knowing where they are going. She cited reports of burials in Russia for those who've died in Ukraine and wounded Russian soldiers being treated in a St. Petersburg hospital.

Merkel Says Tightening Ukraine-Russian Border Is Key To Peace Deal

KIEV, Ukraine -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday the standoff over Ukraine could be solved but only if control was tightened over the Ukraine-Russia border across which, the West alleges, Russia has been funnelling arms to help a separatist rebellion. Merkel was visiting Kiev as a prelude to a meeting next week between the Russian and Ukrainian leaders that diplomats say is the best chance in months of a peace deal in eastern Ukraine, where government forces are fighting pro-Moscow rebels. But she arrived as tensions flared up again. NATO has alleged Russia's military is active inside Ukraine helping the rebels, and Moscow angered Kiev and its Western allies by sending an aid convoy into Ukraine against Kiev's wishes. "There must be two sides to be successful. You cannot achieve peace on your own. I hope the talks with Russia will lead to success," said Merkel, looking ahead to a meeting on Tuesday involving Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko. "The plans are on the table...now actions must follow," the German leader told a news conference after talks with Poroshenko in the Ukrainian capital. She said a ceasefire was needed, but the main obstacle was the lack of controls along the nearly 2,000 km (1,300 mile) border. She proposed an agreement between Kiev and Moscow on monitoring of the frontier by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Poroshenko suggested he saw scope for accord. “The Ukrainian side and our European partners will do everything possible to bring about peace - but not at the price of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the independence of Ukraine," he said. Hours before her plane landed in Kiev, there was heavy artillery bombardment in Donetsk, the main separatist stronghold on the east of Ukraine, near the border with Russia. Reporters saw apartments destroyed and puddles of blood, where, according to residents, two civilians were killed. The unusually intense shelling may be part of a drive by government forces to achieve a breakthrough against the rebels in time for Ukrainian Independence Day, which falls on Sunday. Diplomats say Merkel has two aims for the visit: primarily to show support for Kiev in its stand-off with Russia, but also to urge Poroshenko to be open to peace proposals when he meets Putin next week. TRUCK CONVOY The conflict in Ukraine has dragged Russian-Western relations to their lowest ebb since the Cold War and sparked a round of trade sanctions that are hurting already-fragile economies in European and Russia. A convoy of about 220 white-painted trucks rolled into Ukraine on Friday through a border crossing controlled by the rebels after days waiting for clearance. Moscow said the trucks moved in without Kiev's consent because civilians in areas under siege from Ukrainian government troops were in urgent need of food, water and other supplies. Kiev called the convoy a direct invasion, a stance echoed by NATO, the United States, and European leaders. A journalist at the Donetsk-Izvaryne border crossing, where the convoy rolled into Ukraine on Friday, said trucks on Saturday had started pouring back onto the Russian side of the border. The foreign ministry in Moscow said the convoy had now left Ukraine, though a Ukrainian military spokesman disputed this, saying only 184 of the 220 vehicles had re-entered Russia. In Brussels, NATO said it had reports of Russian troops engaging Kiev's forces inside Ukraine - fuelling Western allegations that the Kremlin is behind the conflict in an effort undermine the Western-leaning leadership in Kiev. "Russian artillery support – both cross border and from within Ukraine – is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces," said NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu. A Ukrainian military spokesman in Kiev, Colonel Andriy Lysenko, said Ukrainian government forces were now coming under cross-border fire from Russia, using Grad and Uragan missiles, over a 400 kms (250 mile) length of the border. The Russian foreign ministry, in a statement, called those allegations "groundless." Russia accuses Kiev, with the backing of the West, of waging a war against innocent civilians in eastern Ukraine, a mainly Russian-speaking region. HOMES DESTROYED The crisis over Ukraine started when mass protests in Kiev ousted a president who was close to Moscow, and installed leaders viewed with suspicion by the Kremlin. Soon after that, Russia annexed the Ukrainian region of Crimea, and a separatist rebellion broke out in eastern Ukraine. In the past weeks, the momentum has shifted towards Ukraine's forces, who have been pushing back the rebels. The separatists are now encircled in their two strongholds, Luhansk and Donetsk. Reporters in Donetsk said that most of the shelling was taking place in the outskirts, but explosions were also audible in the centre of the city. In Donetsk's Leninsky district, a man who gave his name as Grigory, said he was in the toilet on Saturday morning when he heard the whistling sound of incoming artillery. "Then it hit. I came out and half the building was gone." The roof of the building had collapsed into a heap of debris. Grigory said his 27-year-old daughter was taken to hospital with injuries to her head. He picked up a picture of a baby from the rubble. "This is my grandson," he said. In another residential area, about 5 km north of the city centre, a shop and several houses had been hit. Residents said two men, civilians, were killed. Praskoviya Grigoreva, 84, pointed to two puddles of blood on the pavement near a bus stop that was destroyed in the same attack. "He's dead. Death took him on this spot," she said.

With Thousands Now Dead, Ukraine Refugees Say Aid Is Welcome But Peace Is Better

SHCHASTYA, Ukraine -- Zhanna Solohub doesn’t know if the rocket that struck the courtyard of her house this month was fired by pro-Russian rebels or Ukrainian government forces. What she does know, she said, is that the biggest humanitarian gesture either side could make right now is to stop the fighting. Amid intensifying battles this past week for control of key cities in eastern Ukraine, Russia prepared to distribute food, medicine and other supplies that it delivered to rebel-held territory without Kiev’s consent. Ukraine has offered assistance of its own. But aid, some residents said this week, is not as critical as peace. “People are able to survive even without electricity and water,” Solohub said as she lay bandaged in a hospital in this government-held village eight miles from Luhansk, a Ukrainian city close to the Russian border that has seen some of the worst combat of the four-month conflict. “But you can’t prepare yourself for bombing.” Luhansk has been without electricity or water for 20 days, city officials said. But Solohub and her husband were determined to tough it out in the house they built there with their own hands. The rocket attack fractured one of Solohub’s legs and severely wounded a foot. Her husband suffered a spinal injury. The fighting is fueling a growing refugee problem as Luhansk, a city of 425,000 people before the conflict, empties out and residents of Donetsk, about 90 miles to the southwest, flee the hostilities there. The United Nations estimated that at least 190,000 residents of eastern Ukraine had fled to other parts of the country, and it reported that 197,000 had fled to Russia, based on figures provided by the Russian government. An additional 28,000 were believed to have taken refuge in other countries. More than 2,000 people have died since fighting started in April, the United Nations said. Many of the casualties have occurred in recent weeks as the Ukrainian military, pushing into dense urban centers, tried to deal a final blow to rebels who have been forced to surrender much of the territory they once held. “We were hoping it wouldn’t end this way,” said Iryna Veryhina, the pro-Kiev acting governor of the Luhansk region. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to meet in Minsk, Belarus, on Tuesday, along with their French and German counterparts, in what would be their first face-to-face discussions since early June. Ahead of the meeting — which some officials in Kiev hope will be a first step toward a negotiated end to the conflict — Ukrainian forces appear to be trying to advance as far as they can to improve their bargaining position. The civilian death toll has surged in recent days, reflecting the intensified fighting. At the crumbling red-brick hospital in Shchastya, whose name means “happiness” in Ukrainian, shelling and rocket attacks in recent days have been so loud and so constant that nurses sometimes close the rickety windows to try to block out the noise. Doctors, most of whom are volunteers from elsewhere in Ukraine, said they are receiving an adequate, if not bountiful, amount of medical supplies and other aid. But they are short on equipment, their X-ray machines are rudimentary and the three operating rooms are easily overwhelmed on days such as one two weeks ago when 13 injured people came in for treatment. Even in Luhansk, doctors said, some hospitals continue to function, although the fuel for their generators is running low after almost three weeks without electricity or water from municipal utilities. Everyone is learning to live with uncertainty. “We’re within range of the rebels’ Grad systems,” said surgeon Anton Nosik, referring to Soviet-era multiple-rocket launchers that the two sides use to spray rockets onto each other’s positions. “But we’re trying not to think about that.” In a refugee transit camp in Svatove, a government-held town in the Luhansk region about 50 miles from the fighting, dozens of people fleeing the war arrive every day. Although there are peaceful swimming holes in the lazy river that passes by the tent city, the scars of war are very present. Many refugees were startled by the resemblance of the camps’ showers to rocket launchers. Fireworks for a wedding one recent evening set nerves on edge because they sounded much too much like the violence that people had just left behind. The first thing the camp offers new arrivals is a shot of cognac and a chance to talk to a counselor, camp administrator Serhey Yakukhin said. After the cognac, he said, “people sigh, and then they begin to talk.” Many in the camp said that they stayed in Luhansk as long as they could but that the shelling simply become too intense. When food supplies ran low, they mixed flour with a touch of water and baked unleavened bread, if they had a way to cook with fire. Those people willing to endure long lines and the risk of shelling can still buy certain food staples. But prices have nearly tripled for cooking oil and quintupled for cigarettes. “We already know when it’s dangerous or not. If you hear the whistle of a rocket, then you know you need to lie on the floor or go in the basement,” said Nadya Poselyeva, 52, who fled Luhansk a week ago and who was flying a tiny Ukrainian flag from the corner of her bed frame in the olive-green military tent she is sharing with 19 other refugees. All the refugees can tell of friends and family who have died or whose homes have been destroyed. One of Poselyeva’s neighbors was killed. Another neighbor’s house was destroyed by shelling. Another house went up in flames, she said. Poselyeva was a receptionist at a university dormitory until the building was taken over by rebels. She stopped work about a month ago because it was no longer safe to go out, she said. After the Ukrainian National Guard warned that it could not guarantee the safety of her house, she fled with clothes for three days, expecting to be able to return shortly. That time still has not come. “We pray every day that it will end soon,” Poselyeva said. “We're waiting to go home. We don't want to go anywhere else.”

Ukraine And Russia - Battering On

KIEV, Ukraine -- The fighting in eastern Ukraine intensifies as pro-Russian rebels lose ground, raising fresh questions over the plans of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The war is reaching a crunch point. Pushing forward with artillery and bombing raids, Ukrainian forces are recapturing territory and closing in on rebel forces in the east. The mood in Kiev, as Olexsiy Melnyk of the Razumkov Centre sums it up, is to “go to the end”—to finish the war by force. In a purely military contest, without an influx of heavy weapons or ground troops from Russia, the anti-Kiev insurgency would lose. The human cost could be high, but it would give President Petro Poroshenko a battlefield victory without making concessions to Moscow. Discipline is breaking down in rebel ranks, as the Kremlin pulls out high-profile proxies in favour of untested and unqualified locals who have the credibility of being from eastern Ukraine but neither competence nor experience. Donetsk and Luhansk, the two rebel strongholds, are under siege. This suggests that Russia’s Vladimir Putin may face a stark choice: to offer more support to the rebels with extra weapons and covert assistance, perhaps all the way to open invasion; or to pursue a negotiated end to the fighting that sees him withdrawing support for the rebels and facing an embarrassing geopolitical loss. That leaves Kiev (and its Western backers) with a choice, too: to allow the Ukrainian army and the battalions fighting alongside it to pound the cities occupied by rebels with mortars and rockets in the hope that the insurgency will simply crumble, or to seek to end the fighting by making some sort of deal—in name or in fact—with Putin. The next few days will see a flurry of diplomacy: Germany’s Angela Merkel visit Kiev on August 23rd and Putin will meet Mr Poroshenko on the sidelines of a Eurasian Union summit in Minsk on August 26th The Americans are only sporadically engaged by the war in Ukraine, but the European Union—led by Germany—sees it as the greatest threat to security in a generation. Mrs Merkel is making her visit to support Mr Poroshenko and his government and to sound out his readiness for talks. She will press him “to make sure they don’t cross any lines that make it more difficult to take their side,” comments Constanze Stelzenmüller of the German Marshall Fund. The meeting in Minsk may produce little more than did a recent gathering of foreign ministers in Berlin, but the mere fact that the two presidents will talk face to face for the first time since June points to the scope for dialogue. In principle, both Kiev and Moscow should favour a political rather than a military end to the war. Mr Poroshenko would gain more from diplomacy than from flattening Donetsk and risking Russian intervention, and Putin would avoid the costs and risks of a military campaign. Yet there is no guarantee that the conflict will not escalate. Mr Poroshenko faces political pressure not to yield any ground, and after months with Russia acting as puppet-master and chief supplier to the rebels, distrust in Kiev is high. There is “no point in talks with Russia,” says Mr Melnyk. “It tries to play the role of mediator but in fact it’s a party to the conflict.” Even if Mr Poroshenko were ready to make diplomatic overtures, says Olexiy Haran of Kiev Mohyla University, “there is no adequate reaction from the other side.” With Mr Poroshenko and those leading the war in Kiev seeing it as a fight for Ukraine’s survival, they will press on. For all the support from the West, Ukraine knows nobody will help—it has none of the illusions of Mikheil Saakashvili before the 2008 Georgia-Russia war. “Ukrainians are fighting and dying alone,” says Mr Haran. The language of war casts those who support the rebels as terrorists or Russian mercenaries. Post-war reconciliation in Donetsk and Luhansk will thus be exceptionally difficult. In a hospital bed on the Russian side of the border, an injured 52-year-old rebel named Yuri, from the Luhansk region, says that even if Kiev considers him a terrorist, there are “millions of people like me.” Ukraine is understandably preoccupied with finishing the war as soon as possible, but that leads its politicians to cut corners. A recent package of laws allows broad state authority inside the zone of “anti-terrorist operations” in the east, with police able to detain suspects for 30 days without charge and to open fire without warning. The laws were voted into force the day they were introduced. In the Rada (parliament) “all the methods have remained the same” as under Mr Poroshenko’s predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, says Roman Kuibida of the Centre for Political and Legal Reforms; laws are “passed without discussion or opportunity for commentary.” Ukraine needs a new Rada to replace the discredited one of Yanukovych, but if election rules are not reformed voters may elect a similar body. As for Putin, he clearly prefers not to send troops in an open, frontal invasion of Ukraine if other options are available. He could have constructed earlier pretexts for invasion. On the other hand, time and again he has chosen not to draw down the war but to escalate tension, trusting the West to acclimatise itself to each small increase in Russian involvement. At this point, it is impossible to divine Putin’s strategy or his goal. Unpredictability appears to have become an end in itself, a way of shrouding a policy of improvisation in a veil of mystic omnipotence. Moscow’s humanitarian convoy is thus not a piece of a larger, thought-through play, but a gambit—a way for Putin to regain the initiative in the crisis and to shift the conversation from questions over who shot down the Malaysia Airlines jet in July to the genuinely awful humanitarian situation in the east. It also allows Putin to show his domestic audience that he is doing something for the people of eastern Ukraine without sending in tanks. For Putin, Ukraine needs to stay fractured and destabilised: just how this happens is less important. As Igor Korotchenko, editor of a defence magazine who is close to the Russian defence ministry, puts it, “Ukraine can be an enemy state, but it can’t be a strong one.”

Russian Trucks Leave But Ukraine Says They’re Taking Military Parts With Them

KIEV, Ukraine -- A convoy of Russian aid trucks that had entered Ukraine without permission returned to Russia on Saturday, but Ukrainian officials continued to express alarm, saying that Russians had loaded sophisticated military equipment onto the vehicles before they left. Col. Andriy Lysenko, Ukraine’s military spokesman, said that trucks that had driven into the territory “under the guise of humanitarian convoys” had crossed back into Russia on Saturday morning after being packed with Ukrainian-made equipment used to produce an advanced aircraft-tracking system, as well as ammunition for small arms. Russia’s defense sector, which has been hurt by European sanctions, has long been dependent on industries in Ukraine to provide parts for everything from planes to missiles. But the new charges added to tensions over the convoy. Earlier, Western officials had expressed suspicions that the trucks were bringing in small arms to replenish the rebels’ supplies, an allegation Russia has denied. Russia sent the aid convoy into Ukraine without the approval of the Ukrainian government or the support of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a move the Ukrainian authorities called a “direct invasion” and a “flagrant violation of international law.” Workers on the aid trucks, which had previously been stopped at the border for days, distributed food and other supplies Friday evening to the besieged city of Luhansk, part of a shrinking territory held by pro-Russian rebels in the face of an offensive by Ukrainian troops. The latest incidents came as NATO said that Ukrainian troops were coming under Russian artillery fire from within this country’s borders Friday — its strongest denunciation of Russia’s role to date. Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Kiev on Saturday for talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Nikolai Sinitsyn, spokesman for the Russian federal border service in the Rostov region, said the disputed aid trucks had been unloaded and “already returned to Russia,” according to the Russian news service Interfax. The trucks’ speedy exit from Ukraine would be roughly in keeping with the timeline of the ICRC’s plans to have the trucks deliver emergency supplies and immediately go back to Russia. Russia’s Foreign Ministry hinted Saturday that the country planned to send more humanitarian aid. “We confirm the intention to continue cooperation with the ICRC in efforts to provide humanitarian assistance to the residents of southeastern Ukraine, the need for which has by no means disappeared,” the ministry statement said. “Our assistance is still in demand.” On Friday, the White House condemned the Russian action. “At the same time as Russian vehicles violate Ukraine’s sovereignty, Russia maintains a sizeable military force on the Ukrainian border capable of invading Ukraine on very short notice,” National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, the supreme allied commander in Europe, condemned “Russia’s illegal incursion” into Ukraine as he expressed concern about the massing of 20,000 Russian “combat-ready troops” on the border with eastern Ukraine and the flow of Russian arms and operatives to pro-Moscow separatist forces. The unauthorized convoy “indicates that Russia is more interested in resupplying separatists rather than supporting local populations,” Breedlove said in a statement. Russia’s Foreign Ministry maintained that it acted lawfully, saying Saturday that it was “firmly guided by international legal principles of humanity and the protection of the civilian population from the effects of war.” On Friday, the ministry said in a statement that Moscow had run out of patience with “delays” and other “excuses” from Ukraine after a nearly 10-day standoff during which the trucks were stopped at the border. It said Ukraine’s leaders were deliberately trying to slow the delivery of aid to the Luhansk region until “there is no one at all to provide help to.” Ukrainian officials had threatened a military response if the Russian convoy tried to force its way into this country. But state security chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko told journalists in Kiev on Friday that Ukrainian forces would not use force against the convoy because they want to avoid “provocations.” Merkel appeared with Poroshenko at a press conference Saturday afternoon to call for a peace agreement and to announce that Germany would be giving $660 million in aid to rebuild the infrastructure in eastern Ukraine destroyed by months of conflict and to help wounded soldiers. “We need a peaceful solution, and we don’t want an open border that allows weapons to pass from Russia to Ukraine,” she said. It was Merkel’s first visit to Ukraine after the bloody events earlier this year, when protesters who support the country’s closer association with the European Union were killed during demonstrations in Kiev’s Independence Square, or “Maidan.” Analysts said her visit was intended as a show of support by Europe’s most powerful leader and a rebuke to Putin, whose country has important economic ties with Germany. Merkel had spoken to Putin and Poroshenko by phone on Friday to express her “great concern” over the unescorted convoy and to press for a cease-fire, German officials said. Putin had told Merkel in the phone call that “explicit delays from the side of Kiev” forced Russia to send the convoy across the border unilaterally, according to Russian officials. Further delays in getting help to Luhansk residents, many of whom have no water or electricity, would be “unacceptable,” he added. In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John Kirby, stopped short of calling the movement an invasion but said “it strains credulity to think that this equipment’s not moving across the border accompanied by Russian forces.” Kirby called on Russia to withdraw vehicles and personnel and threatened “additional costs and isolation” otherwise. That is a reference to potential further economic sanctions on Russia and diplomatic ostracizing of Moscow, tactics the West has applied for months with little success. The ICRC said the convoy was delayed because of its concern for the safety of its workers in rebel-held areas. The violence in Luhansk claimed the life of Lithuania’s honorary consul in that city, Mykola Zelenec, authorities said. Zelenec was kidnapped and “brutally killed” by rebels, Lithuanian’s foreign minister Tweeted on Friday, expressing “deep sorrow.” Meanwhile, Russian shelling on border stations continued overnight and into the early hours of Saturday morning, Lysenko said. “Russian artillery support — both cross-border and from within Ukraine — is being employed against the Ukrainian armed forces,” NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in a statement Friday, accusing Moscow of a “blatant breach of Russia’s international commitments” that would intensify the crisis. It was the strongest denunciation of Russia’s role in Ukraine that NATO has issued and the first time the alliance has accused Russian forces of firing artillery at the Ukrainian army from within Ukraine. Poroshenko had agreed last week to let Russian and European aid into rebel-held portions of the eastern region of Luhansk, but only if ICRC workers presided over the shipments. The ICRC asked for security guarantees, which Ukraine gave — but only for areas under government control. On Friday morning, ICRC officials told Russia that after a night of heavy shelling in Luhansk, they did not yet have the necessary safety guarantees.

Top Ukraine Rebel Leader Says Troops Training In Russia

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Ukrainian rebels are receiving new armored vehicles and fighters trained in Russia, with which they plan to launch a major counter-offensive against government forces, a separatist leader said in a video. The four-month conflict in eastern Ukraine has reached a critical phase, with Kiev and Western governments watching nervously to see if Russia will intervene in support of the increasingly besieged rebels - an intention Moscow denies. Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said the rebels were in the process of receiving some 150 armored vehicles, including 30 tanks, and 1,200 fighters who he said had spent four months training in Russia. "They are joining at the most crucial moment," he said. He did not specify where the vehicles would come from. Moscow has come under heavy Western sanctions over its annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and accusations it is supporting separatists in east Ukraine with fighters, arms and funds. Russia, as usual, denies those charges. In a sign of concern at the latest rebel comments, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko agreed in a phone call that deliveries of weapons to separatists in Ukraine must stop and a ceasefire must be achieved, a German government spokesman said. The risk of outright war between the two most powerful former Soviet states was highlighted on Friday when Ukraine said it partially destroyed an armored column that had crossed the border from Russia. The report triggered a sell-off in global shares. But Moscow made no threat of retaliation, instead saying it was a "fantasy" that its armored vehicles had entered its neighbor's territory. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden also spoke to Poroshenko, and the White House said: "The two leaders agreed that Russia's sending military columns across the border into Ukraine and its continued provision of advanced weapons to the separatists was inconsistent with any desire to improve the humanitarian situation in eastern Ukraine." Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin called on NATO to provide military support for Ukrainian troops. The rebels, who have ceded ground to government forces in recent weeks, have been promising a counter-offensive for several days but have yet to launch one. Ukrainian native Zakharchenko took over from Russian citizen Alexander Borodai last week and his combative comments will probably dash hopes that changes at the top of the rebel leadership might signal willingness to end hostilities. CONVOY WAITS Adding to the tensions, Russia and Ukraine have been at loggerheads for days over a convoy of 280 Russian trucks carrying water, food and medicine, which remained about 20 km (12 miles) from the Ukrainian border. Officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross said most procedures had been agreed by Russia and Ukraine but the two sides still needed to figure out how to provide security before the convoy moves ahead under the ICRC's aegis. It was not clear when a deal on security could be agreed. Russia says it is a purely humanitarian mission in support of civilians in areas hit by the conflict, but Ukraine is concerned it could serve as a Trojan Horse to infiltrate military supplies or create a pretext for armed intervention. The crisis has dragged relations between Russia and the West to their lowest point since the Cold War and set off a round of trade restrictions that are hurting struggling economies in both Russia and Europe. The United Nations said this week that an estimated 2,086 people had been killed, with nearly 5,000 wounded. The Finnish President, Sauli Niinisto, held talks in Kiev with Poroshenko, a day after discussing how to settle the crisis with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "I do not see a great risk of an outright war," Niinisto said. "My hopefulness is based on the fact that communication is open, at least by a crack." France said a meeting of Ukrainian, Russian, German and French foreign ministers could be a first step towards a peace summit. A rebel Internet news outlet said on Saturday that separatist fighters had killed 30 members of a Ukrainian government battalion in fighting in Luhansk province, a rebel-held area of eastern Ukraine adjacent to the Russian border. A Ukrainian military spokesman, Colonel Andriy Lysenko, contradicted the rebel assertions. He said three Ukrainian servicemen had been killed. Ukrainian security forces had spotted Russian drones and a helicopter crossing illegally into Ukraine's airspace, Lysenko told a news briefing. He denied Kiev's forces were firing artillery on Donetsk, one of two rebel strongholds in the east, where a Reuters reporter said explosions were audible in the city center on Saturday. The Donetsk city administration said four people were killed in shelling that destroyed homes and set several buildings on fire. The momentum on the ground is with the Ukrainian forces, who have pushed the separatists out of large swathes of territory and nearly encircled them in Donetsk and Luhansk. Kiev says it now controls the road linking the two cities. Russia says the Ukrainian offensive is causing a humanitarian catastrophe for the civilian population in the two cities. It accuses Kiev's forces of indiscriminately using heavy weapons in residential areas, an allegation Ukraine denies. In the past week, three senior rebel leaders have been removed from their posts, pointing to mounting disagreement over how to turn the tide of the fighting back in their favor. Lysenko, the Ukrainian military spokesman, said he had reports of rebel fighters abandoning their posts in Luhansk, and preparing to leave Donetsk and seek safe haven in Russia. "A mood of panic is spreading and rebels are trying to leave through the small gaps that remain," he said. In Donetsk, the red, blue and black flag of separatists was flying on a pole in front of the headquarters. Ten people armed with Kalashnikov rifles were standing on guard outside the main entrance in mismatched camouflage. "Why should we flee? People are still coming and filling our ranks. Those who have lost their houses to Ukrainian shelling, what else would they do but fight back?," said a fighter who gave his name as Communist.

From The Fringes Toward Mainstream: Russian Nationalist Broadsheet Basks In Ukraine Conflict

MOSCOW, Russia -- Not so long ago, the ultranationalist broadsheet "Zavtra" would occasionally pillory Russian President Vladimir Putin for various sins. But that all changed with Russia's annexation of Crimea and support for pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine. "With Crimea joining [Russia], Putin suits us. Putin is even an inspiration to us,” says Andrei Fefelov, an editor at "Zavtra" and the son of the newspaper's founder, Aleksandr Prokhanov. "We didn’t expect such steps from Putin. We didn't expect such a strategy. The Russian state is once again rising like a phoenix from the ashes." Likewise, over the past several months, "Zavtra," once on the fringes of Russian political discourse, has found itself firmly in the mainstream. Prokhanov, for example, makes regular appearances on state-controlled television stations and his articles are published in newspapers like the fiercely pro-Kremlin daily "Izvestia." Prokhanov and "Zavtra" haven't changed. The newspaper, which claims a circulation of between 70,000 and 100,000, is still pushing the same visceral anti-Western views and neo-Stalinist views it always has. What has changed, however, is Russian politics, which have taken a decisively nationalist and imperial turn during Putin's third term in the Kremlin. "Yesterday's political marginals have become today's mainstream," said Yevgeny Kiselyov, who hosted the popular current affairs program "Itogi" (Summing Up) on Russia's NTV channel in the 1990s before falling out with Putin’s Kremlin and emigrating to Ukraine. “It's clear that many of the ideas that were propagandized by Prokhanov...have become to an extent practically the principal line of Russian foreign policy." "Zavtra," which means "Tomorrow" in Russian, traces its origins back to the newspaper "Den," or "The Day," founded by Prokhanov in 1990 in the dying days of the Soviet Union. In the early 1990s, it billed itself as "the spiritual opposition" to the pro-Western government of Boris Yeltsin, Russia's first post-Soviet president. Following Yeltsin's bloody confrontation with hard-liners in the Russian parliament in October 1993, "Den" was shut down by the authorities. But it was soon resurrected as "Zavtra," with Prokhanov still at the helm. It continued to be a hotbed of the "red-brown" ideology, a fusion of nationalism, monarchism, and nostalgia for Soviet Communism. The newspaper's staff describe their mission as providing an "ark" to preserve what they believe are the best elements of Russian identity -- Orthodox Christianity, Stalinism, authoritarianism, and nationalism. Anton Shekhovtsov, a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences, describes "Zavtra" as "a fascist newspaper." At the newspaper's Moscow headquarters, portraits of the Russian tsars and Soviet leader Josef Stalin adorn the walls. Throughout the Yeltsin years, "Zavtra" remained on the margins and in fierce opposition to the Kremlin. But when Prokhanov met Putin just months into his presidency in August 2000, he saw reason for hope. "The Kremlin is once again mine, once again part of the family," he wrote in the weekly tabloid "Argumenty i Fakty." But at times Putin proved to be a disappointment for Prokhanov and his ideological cohorts. In 2001, the newspaper assailed Putin for selling out to the oligarchs, writing, “this isn’t a president of the dying Russian people, but the president of a group of national traitors.” Another Zavtra article in 2004 criticized Putin as nothing more than a “continuation of Yeltsin anti-people politics" accusing him of abetting “oligarchy, banditry, corruption, and political prostitution.” In 2005, the broadsheet scorned the president for serving only liberal “fundamentalists” taking from the people to enrich the oligarchs. And assessing the issue of labor migration in 2012, it asked the question: If Putin is the “national leader,” which “nationality is he serving?” "My views on Putin gradually evolved,” Prokhanov said in a recent interview. "Slowly and cautiously, I began to realize what was happening was the restoration of the state. The most obvious moment was his victory in the second Chechen war." But it was with the Ukraine crisis that "Zavtra" threw its support fully behind Putin's Kremlin. Two of the paper’s alumni, former staff writer Aleksandr Borodai and contributor Igor Girkin, took up leading positions in the Russia-backed separatist campaign against Kiev. Borodai served as the self-anointed prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic before he suddenly resigned on August 7. Girkin -- also known as “Strelkov” -- was the rebel commander until resigning on August 14 following unconfirmed reports that he had been injured in battle. Fefelov says "Zavtra" readers view Ukraine’s Donbas region -- part of what Russian nationalists call “Novorossia,” or "New Russia" -- as a potential paradise where communist, nationalist, and monarchist visions of Russia can be played out without being hamstrung by the restraints the real Russia faces. He adds that “many friends and readers” approach "Zavtra" to enlist as volunteer fighters in eastern Ukraine. The newspaper, he adds, has helped link them up with recruiters. Nikolai, a 60-year-old Muscovite and Zavtra reader who declined to give his surname, related his experience as a volunteer fighter in Luhansk. He said he was there two months and manned checkpoints. He claimed the Ukrainian army is perpetrating “genocide.” He presented a photo of himself clutching an assault rifle standing in camouflage beside a frocked, armed, and bearded Orthodox priest. He said he had only returned to Moscow to fetch humanitarian aid for the region. Prokhanov, for his part, says he had a one-on-one meeting with Putin at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence on July 30. "It convinced again that my very first meeting with Putin did not deceive me," he said. Putin's March 18 speech following the annexation of Crimea echoed many of the issues "Zavtra" has long advocated, including Moscow's obligation to protect all ethnic Russians, not just Russian citizens. Nevertheless, Shekhovstov cautioned against overstating the newspaper's drift into the mainstream. "They are becoming more acceptable to the mainstream, but they are not becoming part of it," he said. "There is still a distance between the Kremlin’s ideas of Russian nationalism and Russian imperialism, and the version that 'Zavtra' proposes." With Ukrainian forces gaining ground on the separatists in the east and as Western sanctions begin to harm the Russian economy, is there concern at "Zavtra" that Putin might ditch the rebels and abandon the Novorossia project entirely? Not a chance, says Fefelov. "It would be lethal for Putin," he says. "You can't move a pawn backwards." In fact, the headline of a recent article by Prokhanov appeared to relish a protracted conflict with the West. “Hello Cold War!” it read.

Russia will save the world, as predicted

Has the world come to the point, beyond which it is expected to disappear as a civilization? Yet, the recipe for the salvation of our civilization was proposed two thousand years ago. The helplessness of religion in implementing the ideas of Christ is evident. The leader of the new Russia took on those functions. The convoy, which now travels to Ukraine is the convoy of love. Yesterday's news reports were focused on two main topics. The first one of them was about the white column of trucks carrying humanitarian aid. Moving in the dark, the white column appears like a ray of light. The second one was the speech from the prime minister of Ukraine, Yatsenyuk, at the parliament, where he, with foam at the mouth, was demanding the imposition of sanctions on the Russian Federation. As for the convoy, the media discuss several reasons of why Russia has taken on such an unprecedented step. It is quite obvious that the probability for the cargo to reach the point of destination is extremely small. It is highly likely that the cargo will be plundered or used for the needs of Kiev. Some say that the convoy is a version of the Trojan horse. Some believe that after the convoy crosses the border, it will deliver an absolutely different cargo to Luhansk and Donetsk. This is the point of view of Ukrainian bloggers and also, for example, of former adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Andrei Illarionov, who appeared on the air of a Ukrainian TV channel. "Right now, the attention is focused on the column, which is routed through Voronezh in the Kharkov region. Nobody knows anything about similar columns that may now be traveling to Luhansk and Donetsk regions," Illarionov presumed. According to him, the agreement to receive "humanitarian aid" from Russia legalizes an opportunity for trucks "loaded with something else" to penetrate on the territory of Ukraine. Other, more intelligent writers, such as Simon Schuster suggested on the pages of Time that the convoy was, of course, a humanitarian one. According to him, Russia sent the convoy to Ukraine's Donbass over Putin's preoccupation with his own rating, rather than people's pain and grief. In addition, he wrote, if Putin wanted to attack Ukraine, he would not have to resort to such a complex and risky scheme. Russia can go on the offensive in several hours , while maintaining an element of surprise, Schuster believes. Western writers claim that Putin has lost the sense of reality, and his "increased appetite" threatens not only the entire so-called "post-Soviet space", but also the whole of Europe and even the world. The West and its henchmen in Kiev can not understand what the Russian president was guided with in coordinating the issues of humanitarian assistance through humiliating talks with the "enemy of the Russian world." But, as a classic said, "you can not understand Russia with your mind." The president was not shuffling conscious calculations - he was guided with compassion when he was sending the column to Ukraine. Consciousness is the support of the Catholic and Protestant faiths, were the postulate is: "the richer you are, the more love from God you receive." Orthodoxy has a different message: "The more you suffer, the more purified your soul gets." Soul is the basis of Orthodox faith. How can one co-exist in the scale of civilization? Russia, though many years of existence and suffering has earned the leader, who thinks dialectically. He does not trust the completely utopian idea of communism, nor does he worship the liberal material idea: the greater the consumption, the greater the state. He had lived in the West for long and understands the Western way of thinking, but he is an Orthodox believer. For him, it is soul and its quality - love - that comes first. In Christianity, this quality is the main driving force behind the development of the universe. This is what Christ was preaching, when he was trying to preserve love, when he was expelling traders from the temple, when he suffered humiliation, abuse, betrayal and when he died on the cross. Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ gave a recipe for the salvation of our civilization, but the main conductor of the idea - the church - has not coped with the implementation of this idea in the mind of man. Is it the voice of church that we can hear today in the media? Is it not blasphemy when Patriarch Filaret (the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church) calls for a murderous war? "Ukraine must close the border and eliminate all terrorists. Invaders have broken into our home, and we must kick the enemy out. If there are sincere believers among residents of Donbass, they should not kill their own citizens. Those who came from abroad for the money to kill Ukrainians should be eliminated," Filaret said. The Ukrainian crisis shows that the world is standing on the brink of disaster and extinction. The failure to understand each other's positions has reached its climax. The principle of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" manifests itself in its broadest embodiment. People have completely forgotten that one of the basic laws of the universe is unity in the struggle of opposites. Russia saves Ukrainian servicemen and sends humanitarian cargo, which may not reach its destination. Many prophets predicted that Russia would save the world and civilization. It appears that the beginnings of this new civilization we can now see on the example of the Russian humanitarian aid convoy, which, like a white angel, is traveling through the darkness of hatred.

Ukrainian troops commit act of massive killings of civilians in Uglegorsk

Ukrainian security forces announced the capture of the town of Uglegorsk. The town has been ruined; casualties among the civilian population are plentiful. At the same time, there were no militia troops in the town, although there was a militia checkpoint at the entrance to the town. Yet, there were no militia bases in the town. The Ukrainian troops encircled Uglegorsk, without providing humanitarian corridors to civilians. "On August 12, at 06:00, massive artillery bombardment of the town began. The Ukrainian punitive troops used howitzers D-30, MLRS Grad systems. The fire was conducted from the vicinity of the town of Debalcevo, controlled by Ukrainian law enforcement officers. According to residents of Debalcevo, the artillery shelling continued throughout the day," the press service of the People's Republic of Donetsk said. The troops were shelling residential quarters; the militia checkpoint remained intact. "The infrastructure of the town has been destroyed, the number of civilian casualties is difficult to calculate, but it is possible to say that this is one of the bloodiest operations of "Ukrainian policemen," the militia said. Dozens, or even hundreds of civilians may have been killed. According to the UN, as may nay 2036 people have been killed during the punitive operation of Ukrainian troops against Ukrainian citizens.

Russia bans imports of Ukrainian beer and vodka

The Russian Federal Service for Consumer Control, Rospotrebnadzor, ruled to suspend the shipments of alcohol-containing beverages to Russia from Ukraine. The list of banned drinks includes beer and beer drinks made by several Ukrainian producers, a messages on the website of the agency said. As part of procedures of state supervision over the circulation of food products, during lab tests of vodka, beer and beer drinks produced in Ukraine, numerous violations were found in the field of consumer rights protection (inconsistent requirements for product labeling). It was particularly stated that: - beer produced by JSC Obolon (Ukraine) did not comply with requirements of the energy value and organoleptic characteristics; beer drink produced by JSC San InbevUkraina (Ukraine) did not correspond to product-labeling requirements; - alcoholic beverages produced by LLC Ukrainian Distribution Company (Ukraine) did not correspond to the volume fraction of alcohol and organoleptic characteristics. All laboratory tests were carried out by laboratory centers accredited in the Russian and international accreditation system, the report said. The imports of Ukrainian alcoholic beverages, beer and beer drinks to the territory of the Russian Federation will be suspended from August 15.

Ukraine approves package of 29 anti-Russian measures

On December 12, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine gave the first reading to the government bill about sanctions against Russia. The document regulates 29 measures of "prompt and effective response to current and potential threats to national interests and security of Ukraine." In particular, the Security and Defense Council of Ukraine will be entitled to freeze assets, restrict trading, suspend in whole or in part the transit of resources, prevent the outflow of capital, suspend the implementation of economic and financial liabilities, cancel licenses, restrict or terminate the provision of postal services. Ukraine may also ban or restrict the entry of vessels in the territorial waters or ports of Ukraine. Russian aircraft could be barred from entering the airspace of Ukraine, nor will they be allowed to land on the territory of Ukraine. The restrictions also provide limitations or cessation of the activity of mass media, including on the Internet. Ukraine will terminate cultural exchange, scientific cooperation, education and sports contacts. After the vote on the document, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk said during a break that deputies will be able to introduce amendments to the draft law. The second reading of the bill is likely to be held today. If approved, the document will come into force the day following its publication,

Ukrainian FM blames Russia for Kiev's crimes

krainian Minister for Foreign Affairs Pavel Klimkin accused Russia of futility of Berlin talks about the possibility of truce between government forces and militias in the east of Ukraine. According to the official, the Russian Federation refused to comply with certain conditions, RT says. According to Klimkin, Russia did not claim responsibility for control of the border. The country, he added, also refused to admit that military men and defense hardware constantly cross the border, nor did it admit that the Russian military attack the territory of Ukraine. "As far as I ​​understand, the Russian side is not ready to claim full responsibility for the effectiveness of control over the Ukrainian-Russian border. Russia is not ready to acknowledge the facts of border crossing by mercenaries, military equipment and attacks from the territory of Russia either," Ukrainian Foreign Minister said.

Russian troops enter China for military drills

On August 19, Russian troops arrived to the area of "Peace Mission 2014" military drills of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). According to RT, the drills will be held on the Chinese military range Zhurihe, from 24 to 29 August. The troops of five SCO member states will take part in the drills: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China. In total, the drills will involve more than 7 thousand troops. "Today, the last echelon with personnel and military equipment of the Russian contingent of troops participating in joint military counterterrorism exercises "Peace Mission 2014 arrived in Zhurihe today, on August 19. In total, about 1,000 troops of the motorized infantry unit stationed in the town of Borzya of the Trans-Baikal Territory arrived to the territory of one of the largest military range grounds in Central Asia," the chief of the press service chief of the Eastern Military District of Russia, Colonel Alexander Gordeev advised.

Russian troops enter China for military drills

On August 19, Russian troops arrived to the area of "Peace Mission 2014" military drills of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). According to RT, the drills will be held on the Chinese military range Zhurihe, from 24 to 29 August. The troops of five SCO member states will take part in the drills: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and China. In total, the drills will involve more than 7 thousand troops. "Today, the last echelon with personnel and military equipment of the Russian contingent of troops participating in joint military counterterrorism exercises "Peace Mission 2014 arrived in Zhurihe today, on August 19. In total, about 1,000 troops of the motorized infantry unit stationed in the town of Borzya of the Trans-Baikal Territory arrived to the territory of one of the largest military range grounds in Central Asia," the chief of the press service chief of the Eastern Military District of Russia, Colonel Alexander Gordeev advised.

Ukraine does not allow Russian humanitarian convoy cross border

The Ukrainian authorities will not let the Russian convoy of humanitarian cargo cross the border and enter the territory of the country, if it is accompanied by the Russian military or representatives of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. This was said by deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Valery Chaly. According to Chaly, the humanitarian aid from Moscow will be delivered to the Ukrainian border, customs-cleared and reloaded on vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), under the auspices of which the mission is being conducted. Chaly said that the Ukrainian branch of the ICRC was responsible for the delivery of the humanitarian aid. In addition, Red Cross staff from Geneva will also arrive to help, reports Interfax. According to the official, the Ukrainian side undertakes to ensure the safe of the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Ukrainian territory. Official spokespeople for Red Cross stated that they were not responsible for the delivery of the Russian humanitarian cargo to Ukraine. "We've been told by Russian authorities that an aid convoy is heading to Ukraine border. We're not in charge of this convoy at the moment," representatives of the organization tweeted on their official Twitter account. Meanwhile, Valery Chaly stressed out that this was an international humanitarian mission that Ukraine initiated. At the same time, he acknowledged that Western leaders recommended Kiev should accept the help from Russia. "I will be frank: there is a common sentiment, a piece of advice for us - to take such a step. And we can not ignore the trust that has developed between the partners in the recent years, including on the highest political level. There is such a recommendation there, we considered it and adopted the political decision," he said. Chaly also said that the Ukrainian administration had "no idea what kind of cargo the Russian Federation was delivering." Earlier, Western and Kiev officials expressed suspicions that Russia could use the humanitarian mission as a cover for the invasion of Ukraine and ensure its military presence there. On Tuesday, it was reported that Russia was sending a convoy of 280 KamAZ trucks with about two thousand tons of humanitarian aid: food, including 400 tons of cereals, 100 tons of sugar, 62 tons of baby food, 54 tons of medical equipment and medicines, 12,000 sleeping bags and 69 power plants of various capacities. An official representative for the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation, Alexander Drobyshevsky, told reporters that the destination point to deliver the humanitarian cargo to residents of the south-east of Ukraine would be determined in conjunction with representatives of the ICRC and the Ukrainian side. The three-kilometer-long convoy is to arrive to the border on Wednesday. Russia previously sent official requests to humanitarian agencies of the UN, OSCE, the Council of Europe and the ICRC calling for an international humanitarian mission to Ukraine. On Tuesday, the Russian Federation offered to send an international humanitarian mission to the east of Ukraine under the auspices and accompanied by representatives of the ICRC. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Kiev agreed for the provision of humanitarian assistance.

Russian and Ukrainian tourists fight on quiet resorts

In Russia, social networks and mass media outlets actively discuss news reports about a brawl between Russian and Ukrainian tourists in a Turkish hotel. Facebook users claim that the fight was massive. The participants of the fight were supposedly using beach beds and chairs. Representatives of the Turkish side say that the police registered no conflicts. The footage taken by surveillance cameras of a hotel in Kemer, Turkey, shows a group of guests fighting over something. The reason of the conflict is impossible to establish, although users of social networks post emotional messages about the details of the fight. "The confrontation between the Ukrainians and the Russians came to quiet Turkish hotels. My younger brother is in Kemer in Turkey. Most tourists in the hotel are Russians, Ukrainians and some Turks. All was quiet, but last night, after dinner, a group of people from Kiev started screaming insults - "Muscovites to guillotines" for which they immediately had their a**** kicked by the guys from St. Petersburg," a user wrote on Facebook. It was also said that the tourists used beach beds and chairs and even tried to drown their opponents in the pool. However, both officials at the Russian Consulate General Office in Antalya and representatives of the Turkish police denied the information. Yet, similar stories continue to multiply online. "My friends returned from holidays in Egypt, and there were Ukrainians staying in that hotel with them. After 3 days of holidays, a fight broke out between a group of Russians from Tula, Murmansk and Yekaterinburg with the copped (Ukrainians). The Ukrainians started it: they were grinning the whole night and saying phrases insulting the Russians," another user wrote. Specialists of tourist counseling services say that such conflicts can be difficult to avoid. After all, politics is usually just an excuse for those, who want to spark a conflict. These conflicts speak of a low intellectual level. We all discuss politics and we are all indifferent to the situation in Ukraine. There is a civil war going on there, and if people could understand that with their hearts and minds, they would only show compassion, not aggression," a psychologist said. Yet, there are people in Europe, who believe that tourism is very close to big politics. "Relationships with Russians on resorts aggravate" - the heading of the Dutch version of The Telegraph said. Travel Industry experts say that the level of enmity between tourists from Russia and Holland has been growing lately. The publication wrote with reference to a tourist company that many Russians prefer not to spend their vacations in the countries that criticize Russia's foreign policy. The Ukrainians alter their tourist routes most. Many Ukrainian tourists request a hotel, where the concentration of Russian tourists would be minimal. "In Montenegro, I was once again convinced that the hatred of Russians sits in them hard. All people on the beach were friendly, many would chat to each other - people from all countries, and only the Ukrainians were hissing in a corner, saying that they were so fed up with Russians, who teach their children to swim the wrong way, who laugh the wrong way, and so forth, although all people were quiet on the beach," a user wrote on Facebook. Many Ukrainian publications post the story from a Ukrainian tourist, who wrote a message from "Russia-occupied Egypt." The woman wrote a story of how the Ukrainian tourists were mocking the Russians, who wore Ribbons of St. George on Victory Day. The Ukrainians sang the infamous song about the Russian president, vesti.ru reports. "And I can tell you that the Russians know this hit song well! We were singing this song at night on the balcony out loud, and it was awesome!" the woman wrote on her blog. One should never react to such provocations, psychologists recommend. "If you're being getting involved into a conflict, remember that participation in this conflict is always against you and your reputation, sometimes finances and freedom, - psychotherapist, member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Alexander Tesler warns. - If someone is provoking you, just stand up and leave. Conducting discussions with strangers on conflicting, provocative subjects is beneath your dignity."

Russia bans imports of Ukrainian beer and vodka

The Russian Federal Service for Consumer Control, Rospotrebnadzor, ruled to suspend the shipments of alcohol-containing beverages to Russia from Ukraine. The list of banned drinks includes beer and beer drinks made by several Ukrainian producers, a messages on the website of the agency said. As part of procedures of state supervision over the circulation of food products, during lab tests of vodka, beer and beer drinks produced in Ukraine, numerous violations were found in the field of consumer rights protection (inconsistent requirements for product labeling). It was particularly stated that: - beer produced by JSC Obolon (Ukraine) did not comply with requirements of the energy value and organoleptic characteristics; beer drink produced by JSC San InbevUkraina (Ukraine) did not correspond to product-labeling requirements; - alcoholic beverages produced by LLC Ukrainian Distribution Company (Ukraine) did not correspond to the volume fraction of alcohol and organoleptic characteristics. All laboratory tests were carried out by laboratory centers accredited in the Russian and international accreditation system, the report said. The imports of Ukrainian alcoholic beverages, beer and beer drinks to the territory of the Russian Federation will be suspended from August 15.

Ukrainian troops commit act of massive killings of civilians in Uglegorsk

Ukrainian security forces announced the capture of the town of Uglegorsk. The town has been ruined; casualties among the civilian population are plentiful. At the same time, there were no militia troops in the town, although there was a militia checkpoint at the entrance to the town. Yet, there were no militia bases in the town. The Ukrainian troops encircled Uglegorsk, without providing humanitarian corridors to civilians. "On August 12, at 06:00, massive artillery bombardment of the town began. The Ukrainian punitive troops used howitzers D-30, MLRS Grad systems. The fire was conducted from the vicinity of the town of Debalcevo, controlled by Ukrainian law enforcement officers. According to residents of Debalcevo, the artillery shelling continued throughout the day," the press service of the People's Republic of Donetsk said. The troops were shelling residential quarters; the militia checkpoint remained intact. "The infrastructure of the town has been destroyed, the number of civilian casualties is difficult to calculate, but it is possible to say that this is one of the bloodiest operations of "Ukrainian policemen," the militia said. Dozens, or even hundreds of civilians may have been killed. According to the UN, as may nay 2036 people have been killed during the punitive operation of Ukrainian troops against Ukrainian citizens.

Putin holds meeting of Russian Security Council in Crimea

On August 13th, Russian President Vladimir Putin conducted the meeting of the Russian Security Council in the Crimea. According to Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, the meeting, in particular, was devoted to issues of external security of the peninsula, which the Ukrainian authorities say they intend to return. In addition to the external security of the Crimea,the meeting also discussed the functioning of law enforcement agencies within the Republic of Crimea and in the city of Sevastopol in particular. The discussion also included the issues related to the struggle against corruption in the Crimea and Sevastopol. Peskov said that the operative meeting with permanent members of the Security Council was held in full, ITAR-TASS reports. "After the meeting, Putin will meet with acting governor of Sevastopol and acting head of the Republic of Crimea. They will discuss issues related to the functioning of urban and republican economy, power supplies - that is, issues related to the daily life of these subjects of the Russian Federation," said Peskov. The Security Council meeting was one of a number of activities of the president, scheduled for his two-day visit to the Crimea, which began on August 13. Putin also plans to meet with members of the Russian parliament. Many media outlets assumed that Putin was preparing several highly important statements.

Ukraine's Rebels Prepare To Defend Donetsk To The Death

DONETSK, Ukraine -- Government troops close to surrounding rebel capital and cutting it off from its supply lines to the east. The men at the Budennovsky checkpoint say they are ready. For weeks, the group of rebel gunmen has worked like traffic cops, checking vehicles coming in and out of this eastern Ukrainian city. Yet soon, they expect, it will be time to fight: retreating behind cinder blocks and slinking into roadside trenches to mount the final defence of Donetsk, a million-strong metropolis facing imminent attack. "You'll see," says "Metky" (Sharpshooter), 37, a thickset former miner wearing camouflage fatigues and body-builder's gloves and cradling an AK-74 with a grenade launcher fixed underneath. "Tanks don't work in a city. We'll be at every corner, every window. Bang! An RPG, straight down the hatch." Such a battle is hard to imagine in 21st century Europe. Yet it is creeping closer after Ukrainian forces advanced in a classic pincer movement last week to cut off the rebel capital and its vital supply lines through rebel-held territory to the east and - ultimately - to the border with Russia. It is almost four months since separatists in the Russian-dominated Donbass region of eastern Ukraine launched their armed bid for autonomy. Initial victories have slowly been eroded and Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine's pro-western president, has promised to crush the "terrorist" uprising in time for new elections in a matter of months. "In autumn there will be a new parliament that will start on reforms," he said on Friday. Today the territory carved out for the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "peoples' republics" is shrinking fast as the Ukrainian army makes ground. If government forces can take full control of area around the crash site where Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down on July 17, killing all 298 people on board, they will effectively have encircled Donetsk itself. On Thursday, Igor Girkin, the separatists' Russian military commander, was forced to issue a diktat declaring that Donetsk was officially in a "state of siege". His friend, the "people's governor" Russian Pavel Gubarev, promises a new Stalingrad if Kiev-backed forces move on the city. It may be an idle boast and Ukrainian forces appear to have a great superiority in men and hardware. The rebels probably have no more than 20,000 fighters, mostly in Donetsk. Yet everyone remembers another example: Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, in the 1990s. Then, an overconfident Russian army sent columns of tanks into the city, only to see them destroyed by few but nimble rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). What's more, in Donbass a flow of weapons and volunteer fighters across the border from Vladimir Putin's Russia, now fixed in a "New Cold War" with the West throughout the former Soviet Union, has so far bolstered the rebel movement The United States, Australia, Britain and other European states believe the Kremlin may have supplied or manned a Buk missile launcher allegedly used to knock down MH17. In a telephone call late to Putin late on Friday, President Barack Obama called on Russia to heed international pressure to defuse the civil war tearing apart Ukraine and expressed his "deep concerns" about Moscow's increased support for the separatists. But at Budennovsky, the men - who give only their noms de guerre - are locals and say they fight for their land, not for Moscow. "Every man has a grenade," says "The Greek", a 31-year old plumber who spent 15 years living on Crete before returning to his native village just outside Donetsk. "When the battle begins no one will allow himself to be taken alive. "If we give up now," he adds, pointing to a row of shabby cottages behind the checkpoint, "the Ukrainian fascists will take our town and all these people here who brought us food, gave their support, will be slaughtered or turned into slaves." Propaganda from Kremlin-controlled television channels has done its work among these fighters, who abound with conspiracy theories. The Ukrainians have set up concentration camps; they are slashing open the corpses of rebels to sell their organs. Yet the men have real cause for grief and anger. One has a son and parents in Torez, one of the towns to the east which the Ukrainian army is pounding with artillery as it attempts to complete their encirclement of Donetsk, at a point close to the MH17 crash site. Hundreds of civilians have been killed or maimed in the conflict. Human Rights Watch said on July 24 that the use of "notoriously imprecise" unguided Grad rockets by Ukrainian government forces in urban areas "may amount to war crimes". Donetsk, particularly its outskirts where rebel defence and artillery units are positioned, is peppered daily by shells. On Friday one ploughed into a road on the western fringe of the city, killing one resident and injuring several in a passing minibus taxi, which was left awash with blood. Earlier in the week, heavy artillery shells - thought to be 130 or 152mm - smashed into a series of apartment blocks in Vetka district, the first time they have hit so close to the city centre, a mile away. On Rosa Luxemburg Street a crowd surveyed the damage: gaping holes ripped in the fifth floor where an elderly lady miraculously escaped injury by going to the lavatory a few moments before the shell exploded in her bedroom. Just down the road, Alexander Dvoryadkin, 66, rushed to the scene when four shells plummeted in front of a 10-storey block leaving craters two-yards wide and spraying asphalt and stones that killing a street cleaner standing in the yard."We almost tripped over his body, it was covered in dirt and debris," said Mr Dvoryadkin. Shells are not the only fear. With wartime comes military law and military justice. Igor Girkin, the Russian rebel commander, also know as Strelkov, has already displayed his relish for brutal solutions. Early in July he and his forces retreated from Slavyansk, a town to the north of Donetsk that was until then the rebels' stronghold. Reporters who sifted through the charred remains of the rebels' Slavyansk headquarters after their flight found a series of court documents signed off by Girkin. They show he ordered the execution of an unemployed welder for stealing two shirts and a pair of trousers. The punishment was based on a Stalin-era martial decree published on June 22nd, 1941. In Donetsk, police have melted away, leaving armed rebels in charge of law and order. One night last week, The Telegraph witnessed a group of militiamen seizing a young woman outside the city's popular BaNaNa restaurant. She cried out in anguish as they wrapped her in packing tape, pushing her into the boot of a car and drove her away.Despite repeated attempts The Telegraph has so far been unable to establish her identity, or her fate. On Mir (Peace) Street in Donetsk, a group of civilians gathers every day outside the former headquarters of the SBU, Ukraine's Security Service, which is now Girkin's base, to plead for the return of detained relatives. At 6pm a rebel official should come out to read a list of the prisoners. Sometimes he appears, sometimes not. On Friday evening, 40 people - mostly women - craned over a line of sandbags at the fortified entrance to the base, shouting to a guard in a vest with an automatic slung over his shoulder. "This is fascism! Give me back my grandson," cried one. Another asked the guard for how long people could be detained. "How should I should know?" said the guard, scratching himself and puffing on a cigarette. "Up to 60 days, I think." "It's the not knowing that kills you," said Marina, 37, a pastry chef with glittery eye shadow, who - like many here - was afraid to give her surname.She thought she knew why her husband, Dmitry, 33, was detained. "He came here himself to sign up as a militiaman," she said. "They gave him one day's training, stuck an automatic in his hand and told him he was off to the front. I said that was madness, and persuaded him to refuse. So they took him away." Others thought their relatives had disappeared into the SBU building for minor infractions like drinking or breaking the loosely-observed 11pm curfew. Lyudmila Maidanova, an elegant older lady in paste earrings and a pressed blouse, said her grandson Sasha, 30, a computer technician, had gone missing without trace from his home three days earlier. "I've been everywhere, this is the only place he could be," she said. Meanwhile, hundreds of people flee the city every day and taxi drivers - on this, at least, a reliable source - estimate that 30 per cent of the population has already gone. On Friday, the rebels' ministry of defence warned it would requisition cars, building materials, food and medical supplies for military use. Streets are deserted and goods are thinning in the shops. "I thought about joining the militia but I've got a mortgage to pay," says Vitalik Cherkashin, 25, a barman at the city's Ramada Hotel."All my friends have left for Russia and Crimea. There's nowhere I could go. The Ukrainians are coming closer and closer." At the hotel, reporters in helmets and flak jackets are the only guests and a notice in the lobby gives advice on what do in case of artillery fire hitting the building. The waiting staff has been cut from 26 to six, and several employees sleep at the hotel to avoid returning home to shell-hit suburbs. "Maybe there's still a way to stop this madness," says Mr Cherkashin. "I don't like the government in Kiev and my roots are Russian but we don't have to live apart. Kiev just needs to treat us like equal citizens." Back at the Budennovsky checkpoint the men see little room left for compromise. "If you told me a year ago that I'd be running around with this Kalashnikov, I'd wouldn't have believed you," says "Dyusa", 39, a car mechanic. "Now I know we'll fight to the last drop of blood. And if the Ukrainians take Donetsk we'll go to the woods. That's the next phase: partisan war."