KYIV – Pro-Russian rebels in the Donbas, backed by the Russian military, on January 13 launched their biggest military campaign against Ukrainian forces since the September 5 Minsk ceasefire protocols, staging hundreds of attacks in a fierce attempt to take control of the territory of the ruined Donetsk airport.
Besides the military offensive, terrorist attacks were launched throughout Ukraine. Besides the January 13 Volnovakha attack that killed 13 civilians and injured 17, a January 19 explosion near a Kharkiv courthouse injured 14, four of them seriously, and a bridge was blown up the next day in the Zaporizhia region as a cargo train crossed it. The rebels also launched an offensive to destroy the Avdiyivka coke plant in the Donetsk region, a key source of coking coal used for heating furnaces.
The Russian government intended its military-terror campaign to boost its negotiating position with the Europeans and Ukrainians in talks to resolve the Donbas war, said Volodymyr Fesenko, the director of the Penta Center for Applied Political Research in Kyiv.
Russian officials were discouraged after failing to gain concessions at a January 12 foreign affairs ministers meeting in Berlin. Subsequently, plans for a January 15 summit in Astana, Kazakhstan, involving the French and German heads of state fell through after preconditions weren’t met.
“Russia, together with the separatists, is trying to revise the Minsk accords, while Ukraine and the EU are insisting on their fulfillment,” Mr. Fesenko said. “Not having achieved their goal, Russia and the separatists want to force Ukraine into a peace based on their conditions.”
At the top of their list of demands is recognition of the separatists as an official party in the negotiation process, he said, rather than their current status as observers.
Meanwhile, Russia’s strategy on the ground is to push the boundary between Ukrainian lands and the occupied territory as far west as possible.
“They are trying to throw as far back from the capitals of the separatist republics, so that the border is as far as possible from Luhansk and Donetsk,” Mr. Fesenko said. “That’s why they’re storming the Donetsk airport, shooting up Debaltseve and trying to get as close as possible to Mariupol.”
Debaltseve is a key transit hub, located 46 miles northeast of Donetsk. Mariupol is a key port city on the Azov Sea and the location of two large steel-producing plants. And although the Donetsk airport, constructed in 2012, is largely ruined, capturing its territory would allow the separatists to keep their military hardware and armaments in the city of Donetsk, in accordance with the current conditions of the Minsk accords.
Losing the airport’s territory would require clearing the city of hardware, according to the accords, which stipulate an arms-free buffer of 30 kilometers, or 15 kilometers on each side of the border between the occupied territories and Ukraine.
The Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry even claimed in a January 18 statement that the airport belongs to the territory controlled by the separatists as stipulated by the Minsk accords.
The armed fighting around the Donetsk airport during the weekend of January 17-18 resulted in 13 Ukrainian soldiers killed and 68 wounded, according to estimates offered by the press center of the Anti-Terrorist Operation.
About 300 separatists were killed the week ending January 18, estimated Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the internal affairs minister.
Returning from a visit to the Donbas that weekend, Russian anti-war activist Elena Vasilieva estimated that 382 soldiers were killed and “significantly more” than 500 were injured during the weekend from her nation’s side. She said she couldn’t offer a more accurate estimate, citing a lack of information from the Russian military.
Since then, the Russian armed forces dispatched two tactical groups into Ukrainian territory, reported the National Security and Defense Council on January 19. In addition, hardware such as tanks, howitzers, radio-electronic warfare systems, and Grad, Smerch and Buk rocket systems have been dispatched.
On January 20, Ukrainian soldiers were attacked by regular Russian soldiers in the Luhansk region, reported Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Anti-Terrorist Operation. As of that evening, they were engaged in “fierce fighting,” he said.
Meanwhile, counter-terrorist operations were launched by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in response to the attacks in the Kharkiv and Zaporizhia oblasts.
At the Donetsk airport, pro-Russian forces intensified their firing at Ukrainian forces to 90-100 daily incidents from about 10, beginning on January 7, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz during his January 19 visit to Warsaw.
As a result, Ukrainian forces – particularly volunteer battalion fighters – had to attack in response, partly in order to evacuate Ukrainian soldiers, including the wounded and dead.
Mr. Poroshenko said he gave them the order on January 17 to respond with fire, which observers said marked the first time the president has had to legitimize an offensive role of the volunteer battalions on an official level. The Russian-led escalation violated a December 9, 2014, artillery ceasefire agreement, Mr. Poroshenko said.
The aim of the Russian-backed military offensive “is to definitely disrupt the Minsk accords” and try to force its renegotiation, Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin told the Kyiv Post in an interview published on January 19.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt confirmed on January 20 that the escalated fighting was provoked by the Russian government and pro-Russian fighters.
That strategy won’t work because Ukraine and the West are committed to the Minsk agreement, which calls for a ceasefire, withdrawal of Russian troops, an end to the Kremlin’s support for its separatist proxies and secure borders monitored by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Mr. Klimkin said.
Mr. Klimkin revealed his disinterest in another round of talks planned for January 21 in Berlin involving the foreign affairs ministers of the “Normandy format” – which refers to the participation of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine – without identifiable progress made beforehand. “Why do we have to meet if we have nothing to deliver?” he said in the interview. As it turned out, all that was agreed upon was that the sides would meet again to discuss the removal of arms. Russia also promised to talk to the terrorists, “in essense to talk to itself,” Mr. Klimkin tweeted.
He also expressed skepticism about the prospects of a Normandy format meeting involving the heads of state by the end of January, as had been planned for Astana, given that the Russian side hasn’t expressed an interest in concrete agreements.
The day after Mr. Klimkin’s comments were published, Russian Presidential Administration Spokesman Dmitry Peskov offered similar sentiments, but with the Kremlin’s spin. “Such a meeting can only occur in the event of preparing for its results,” he said. “At the moment, such preparation doesn’t look as likely as had been before the renewal of military actions by Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, the European Parliament on January 15 approved a resolution on Ukraine that condemns “the aggressive and expansionist politics of Russia, which poses a threat to the unity and independence of Ukraine and creates a potential threat to the EU itself.”
The resolution condemned “the undeclared hybrid war against Ukraine,” which consists of an information war, elements of cyberwarfare, energy-sector blackmail, economic pressure, and diplomatic and political destabilization.
It calls upon the Russian government “to cease the escalation of the situation; immediately stop the flow of arms, mercenaries and armies in support of the separatist armed formations; and use its influence to convince the separatists to participate in political processes.”
It calls for extending the current sanctions regime and even strengthening it under the current war conditions to include the nuclear sector and restrictions on Russian businesses that conduct international financial operations. It also calls upon European Union member states to provide the Ukrainian government with arms.
The document didn’t respond to the request made by Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics be designated as terrorist organizations. Instead, the resolution “condemns the acts of terrorism and crimes committed by the separatists and other irregular forces in eastern Ukraine.”