On defensive, Ukraine rebels seize city

A woman looks through a broken window in her house after shelling Tuesday in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine.
A woman looks through a broken window in her house after shelling Tuesday in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine.

KIEV, Ukraine -- Ukrainian rebels seized a town in the Luhansk region Tuesday after a retreat from eastern strongholds as European Union states considered expanding a list of Russians facing sanctions as soon as today.

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Several hundred rebels seized Popasnaya, a city of 20,000 people, news service Interfax reported, citing the separatists. After the militants shifted thousands of fighters to the provincial capital of Donetsk last week, Ukrainian forces continued to press their campaign, said Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Danylo Lubkivsky, who said the separatists wouldn't agree to peace talks.

"The turmoil in Ukraine is slowly coming to its logical conclusion," Lubkivsky said in Kiev. "An active anti-terrorist operation is continuing because they don't want to lay down their arms."

Representatives of the 28 EU governments met in Brussels on Monday and agreed that sanctions could be applied as soon as today to more Russians they accuse of backing the rebels. President Vladimir Putin's government is calling for peace talks amid Russia's biggest showdown with the United States and its European allies since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Russia will respond to any sanctions with "serious countermeasures," Deputy Finance Minister Sergey Storchak said Tuesday.

About 50 people were killed, mostly civilians, over the weekend as government forces drove rebels out Kramatorsk in the northern part of the Donetsk region, the city government said on its website. More than 140 people were injured in the clashes, with 22 still in the hospital.

Pro-Russian militias attacked Ukrainian positions a dozen times in the past 24 hours, including a tank assault on the Luhansk airport, Defense Ministry spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. They destroyed seven bridges, including three Monday, after the army recaptured territory, the government said on its website. The insurgents also laid mines, posing a risk to civilians, the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

Ukraine's army has won the biggest victories of its three-month campaign during the past few days, retaking the towns of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. Lysenko said government troops had blocked all roads to Donetsk and Luhansk. Several thousand militants and dozens of vehicles including tanks and armored personnel carriers moved to the bigger cities Saturday.

The militants have vowed to make a stand there. Citizens in Donetsk report daily gunfire and explosions, while Ukrainian army forces have yet to enter the cities in force. Two people died and eight were wounded by shelling in Luhansk, according to Lysenko, who said the militants had fired the round.

Any decision by the EU on sanctions this week will build on the asset freezes and travel bans the bloc has already imposed on 61 people.

Its first opportunity to consider wider penalties on Russian industry, investment or trade will be at a July 16 meeting. Objections by countries such as Italy, Austria, Slovakia, France and Greece have frustrated moves toward broader sanctions, which require unanimity.

The Ukrainian government said it will need to spend an estimated $4.3 million to repair the bridges destroyed by the rebels, whom it blamed for millions more in damage to the country's railroads.

Pictures after one blast in Novobakhmutova, about 20 miles north of central Donetsk, showed a rail bridge collapsed across a main highway leading north to Slovyansk, leaving part of a freight train suspended on the track in mid-air on the electrified line.

In Brussels, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroisman said a $17 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund had helped Ukraine's recovery but the country still needed more aid.

"The Ukrainian people have definitively chosen the European path and the European family, but the price we are paying for this is very high," Hroisman said. "We have unprecedented aggression by the Russian Federation, not only on a military level."

The Russian government urged the EU to condemn "criminal policies of the Kiev authorities" and accused the Ukrainian government of ignoring calls to protect civilian lives.

"The fighting is inflicting great suffering on the civilian population, as a result of which the outflow of refugees is increasing and civilian infrastructure is being destroyed," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.

Information for this article was contributed by James G. Neuger and Leon Mangasarian of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 07/09/2014

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