Ukraine Live Day 385: Heavy Fighting Reported In Shirokino

Novosti Donbassa reports that the press office of the governor of the Lugansk region, Hennadiy Moskal, has announced that a 13-year-old boy has been taken to hospital in Lysychansk after being severely wounded by ammunition.

According to Moskal’s office, the boy, from the village of Ustinovka in the Popasnaya district, had found some ammunition lying on the banks of the Seversky Donets river.

The ammunition detonated when he took it home and attempted to disassemble it, leaving him with blast trauma wounds to his chest and abdomen.

— Pierre Vaux

Mariupol news site 0629.com.ua reports that the city’s military headquarters has announced that, as of 14:30 GMT, combat is still under way in the village of Shirokino, around 10 kilometres to the east.

At 12:30 GMT, 0629 reported that Oleg Sushinsky, press officer for the Mariupol headquarters, had announced that, in violation of the terms of the Minsk agreement regarding the use and withdrawal of heavy weaponry, the Russian-backed fighters were using 120 mm mortars to attack Shirokino, along with tanks and infantry.

This was also reported by the ATO Press Centre at 14:21 GMT.

According to Sushinsky, four Ukrainian soldiers had been wounded but there were no fatalities.

At 13:42 GMT, 0629 reported that Ukrainian troops were repelling attacks by ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ fighters and were maintaining their positions. 

— Pierre Vaux

Ukrainska Pravda reports that Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council, has told reporters that Ukraine has executed the fourth stage of the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the front line, but that there will not be a full withdrawal of military hardware until there is confirmation that Russian-backed forces are doing the same.

The Interpreter translates:

“We are now waiting for the enemy to also prove that they have really withdrawn their heavy weaponry from certain areas.”

The ATO headquarters claimed that Russian-backed fighters were moving weaponry to the rear during the day but returning it to the front during the night, faking a withdrawal.

The Ukrainian military claimed that the fourth stage of artillery withdrawal had been completed yesterday, with the withdrawal of Grad and Uragan MLRS as well as 100 mm anti-tank guns.

— Pierre Vaux

RFE/RL’s Crimean service reports that three participants in a rally to celebrate the birthday of the Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, were detained earlier today by the occupying Russian authorities in Simferopol.

The group were later released but the organiser of the event, Leonid Kuzmin, has been informed by the police that he will face a district court tomorrow morning on the grounds that the event allegedly violated Article 20 of the Administrative Code of the Russian Federation, which pertains to disrupting public order or political protest rules.

Kuzmin said that he assumed one of the reasons for their arrest was their use of Ukrainian national symbols. RFE/RL reported that this had been confirmed by the police.

— Pierre Vaux

A teaser has been released today for a documentary, “Homeward Bound – Crimea. The Road to the Motherland,” which will be released on Rossiya 1 TV, a state-owned television station. In it, Russian President Vladimir Putin makes two claims — that  Russia felt it needed to “save the life” of the Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, and that it was at this time that the Russian government decided to annex Crimea.

The teaser can be watched here. In the video below, Christo Grozev has already put English subtitles which look to be accurate. According to that translation, Putin says:

I invited to the Kremlin the heads of our secret services and the Ministry of Defense and gave them the task to save the life of the Ukrainian president [Viktor Yanukovych]. Otherwise they were going to destroy him…

Putin is referencing the Euromaidan Revolution in Kiev. Putin goes on:

So, large-caliber machine guns were set up there… so to avoid any lengthy discussions.

We prepared to salvage him straight from Donetsk. By land, by sea, or by air.

It was between the 22nd or the 23rd… we spoke until 7 in the morning. And when they were leaving, I told the colleagues:

We must start the process of bringing Crimea back to Russia.

These statements are curious. The deploying of the “little green men” in Crimea came after Yanukovych left Ukraine and fled to Russia, and the insurgency and Russian invasion of the Donbass came after that. So it’s not clear what “large-caliber machine guns” are being referenced here.

What is interesting is that back on February 21, 2014, Viktor Yanukovych met with leaders of the political opposition, including Vitali Klitschko, Arseny Yatsenyuk, and Oleg Tyagnibok. Those three negotiated a settlement to the crisis, but since they were not directly elected by the protesters in Maidan Square, and since the terms of the deal were largely unacceptable to the protesters, Klitschko was booed off the stage in Maidan when he explained the deal to the crowds below.

But in descriptions of that meeting, Yanukovych was called out the the meeting to have a phone call with Putin. At the conclusion of that phone call, Yanukovych seemed eager to sign a deal. But after the deal was signed Yanukovych immediately fled to Kharkiv, where he then fled to Russia.

Similarly,  before making the decision to ultimately not sign the European Union association agreement in November 2013, Yanukovych met with Putin in Russia. However, he appeared to try to avoid the meeting altogether, since his limo got “lost en route” to the meeting. Speculation at the time was that Yanukovych was being pressured by the Ukrainian people to sign the EU agreement and was simultaneously pushed by his powerful neighbor, Russia, to not sign the deal. When Yanukovych first spoke after leaving Ukraine, he said that initially he was interested in pursuing the deal with the EU but his trip to Moscow showed him the true “costs” of such a move.

— James Miller