Tension escalated in Ukraine’s troubled southeast in the run-up to presidential elections on May 25, as separatist leaders vowed to disrupt the vote, while Kiev is struggling to reassert control over the region.
Gun battles were fought throughout the night near the city of Sloviansk, a rebel stronghold in Donetsk region, with government troops badly damaging a railway bridge, a tile factory and a motorway leading to the city, but making no gains on the ground, Sloviansk self-defence activists said.
Despite the presence of an estimated 17,000 troops in the Russian-speaking southeast, Kiev appears to have little control over the region.
On Saturday, about 150 insurgents stormed a border post with Russia in Donetsk region to free “People’s Governor” of neighbouring Luhansk region after he was detained by Ukrainian border guards on crossing from Russia. Valery Bolotov had been recuperating in Russia after an assassination attempt a week ago.
Switching sides In Donetsk, about 100 Ukrainian troops switched sides when insurgents took control over a National Guard regional headquarters as a result of “treason,” the National Guard command announced in Kiev.
Donetsk rebels said they had captured weapons, three armoured vehicles and several army trucks and weapons at the National Guard base.
Opening a second meeting of the “National Unity” roundtable in Kharkiv, in the east, on Saturday,
Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, appointed by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to help resolve the crisis, urged all sides to seek peaceful compromise and “use words, not weapons.”
However, representatives of the rebels were not invited either to the first roundtable in Kiev on Wednesday, nor to the second meeting in Kharkiv.
Rebel leaders said there would be no elections on May 25 in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which proclaimed their independence on Monday. The Ukrainian Interior Ministry reported a string of rebel attacks in recent days on election commissions in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with insurgents confiscating computer discs, detaining election officials and shut down their offices.
Ukraine’s Central Election Commission has complained that it could not get on with preparations for the vote in the east in the face of insurgency.
Legitimacy questioned Russia on Saturday questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian election “held amid the thunder of guns” and demanded that Kiev immediately halt “punitive action against its own citizens.”
