Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of stoking their countries' conflict, by visiting the disputed Crimea peninsula amid rising violence between Kiev's troops and Moscow-backed separatists.
Mr Putin held meetings on tourism yesterday in Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine 17 months ago, after a night of heavy shelling in eastern Ukraine killed at least seven people and injured several others, according to Kiev and rebel officials.
Shelling has intensified and spread in the last week along much of the frontline in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, with the area between rebel-held Donetsk city and the government-controlled port of Mariupol now a key flashpoint.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the rising violence resembled “preparations for more military action”, in contravention of a fragile ceasefire agreed in Minsk, Belarus, in February; on Sunday, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said eastern Ukraine was now “explosive”.
“Putin’s arrival in Ukrainian Crimea, without agreement from Ukrainian authorities, is a challenge to the civilised world,” Mr Poroshenko said.
He called the visit “a continuation of a plan to escalate the situation, which is being carried out by Russian troops and their mercenaries” in eastern Ukraine.
The government-held village of Sartana, north of Mariupol, came under heavy artillery fire on Sunday night. It killed at least two civilians and injured several more. “The enemy was not shelling Ukrainian positions, but a civilian town,” said Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko.
“The next time they’ll get a quick response. What happened in Sartana is a challenge to our forces.”
In other locations, two government soldiers were killed and seven wounded over the previous 24 hours, Col Lysenko said.
The mayor of the rebel-held town of Horlivka, north of Donetsk city, said heavy Ukrainian shelling had killed three civilians and injured four others.
More than 6,700 have been killed by fighting that began in April 2014, and about 1.5 million have left their homes due to a conflict that has dragged relations between Russia and Ukraine’s western allies to their lowest point since the cold war.
Moscow and Washington accuse each other of stoking Ukraine’s crisis in pursuit of their own geopolitical interests. “We are worried by the developments in recent days, which strongly resemble preparations for more military action,” Mr Lavrov said.
“It was like this in August last year when Ukrainian soldiers received the order to attack . . . It was like this in January this year. One shouldn’t be experimenting and trying one’s luck, one should simply fulfil what was agreed in Minsk.”
On the occasions referred to by Mr Lavrov, Kiev says Russian troops entered Ukraine to crush government forces at Ilovaisk and Debaltseve respectively; some 9,000 Russian troops started war games yesterday, including units stationed near Ukraine’s border.
The Minsk deal appears doomed, because Kiev vehemently disagrees with Moscow and the separatists over how much autonomy the disputed regions should have.
