KIEV, Ukraine - Ukraine’s security forces pressed their assault on pro-Russia militants in and around the separatist stronghold of Slovyansk on Saturday, even as the rebels freed seven European military observers and the Kremlin cited the deaths of dozens of people in Odessa as proof that Ukraine can no longer protect its citizens.
The Ukrainian forces built on their recent advances into Slovyansk’s outskirts, entering the nearby town of Kramatorsk, where the Interior Ministry said the main state security building had been recaptured.
“We, Ukrainians, are now constantly pushed into confrontation, into civil conflicts and to ruination of the country from inside,” said acting President Oleksandr Turchynov on his website Saturday. “We cannot allow this to happen and have to be united in our fight with a foreign enemy who wants to destroy Ukraine.”
A day after two Ukrainian helicopters were reported to have been shot down as Ukraine moved to retake positions in and around Slovyansk, the authorities said the operation was continuing in Kramatorsk. “We are not stopping,” Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said Saturday on his Facebook page.
“What is happening in the east is not a short-term action; this is essentially a war,” said Vasyl Krutov, the head of Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operations.
The Ukrainian Security Service said its fighters were facing “highly skilled foreign military men” in Slovyansk. It said one of the helicopters was shot down Friday with a surface-to-air missile, which it said undercut Russia’s claims that the city is under the control of civilians who bought arms in “hunting stores.”
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said a third helicopter, an Mi-8 transport reportedly carrying medics, was also hit and a service member wounded.
But even with that reported success after earlier military setbacks, the events in Odessa on Friday were a measure of how far events have spiraled out of the authorities’ control and added to pressure from Russia. Odessa’s population includes many Russian speakers sympathetic to Moscow, but it is far west of the restive eastern region where most fighting has occurred.
An off icial in Odessa said 46 people had died in the street battles between pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine groups and in a fire in a building held by pro-Russia militants. If confirmed, the death toll would be the highest since February during struggles between pro-Europe groups and the pro-Russia government of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych.
Until Friday, Odessa, a Black Sea port in southern Ukraine, had been mostly calm.
Near the end of the day, the pro-Russia militants had retreated to the local House of Unions, which was then set on fire as the two groups continued to battle. Amid the lobbing of firebombs, it was impossible to know who had started the blaze. Odessa authorities said 214 people were injured in the various events, including 88 who were hospitalized.
A three-day mourning period was declared in Odessa on Saturday as mourners went to the fire site to lay flowers. There were no signs of new unrest, but Valery Kaurov, a leader of the anti-government contingent in the city, told Russian state television that protests could resume when the mourning period ends.
The death toll came from the Odessa regional prosecutor, Ihor Borshulyak, who spoke to reporters Saturday, the Interfax news agency said. Borshulyak also said 144 people had been arrested and that one of several inquiries would look into whether the police had failed to execute their duties. The local police chief, appointed in March, appealed for calm in the town of about 1 million people but was fired shortly afterward by Avakov.
Secretary of State John Kerry condemned the violence in Odessa.
“All of this violence is absolutely unacceptable, and Russia, the United States, Ukrainians, Europeans, the OSCE - all of us bear responsibility to do everything in our power to reduce the capacity of militants and extremists who are armed to be carrying out these terrorist and violent activities,” Kerry said Saturday.
“They must end, and everybody with any influence on any party has an obligation to try to bring an end to this violence.”
In Moscow, a Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia would no longer be able to tell ethnic Russians not to take up arms. “The authorities in Kiev are not only directly responsible, they are direct accomplices in these criminal actions,” Peskov said. “Their hands are full of blood.”
He added that Russia had “lost its influence on those people, because it would be impossible to persuade them to disarm amid a direct threat to their lives.”
Peskov said the Kremlin is receiving “thousands” of calls for assistance from Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine.
“People are calling in despair, asking for help. The overwhelming majority demand Russian help,” he said.
The Kremlin, however, has not yet decided how to respond, Peskov said. “This element is absolutely new to us,” he said. He said Russian authorities have lost their ability to influence pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine and that they would not be able to resolve the increasingly violent situation alone.
Peskov also said Russia regretted that the United States and the European Union had endorsed Ukraine’s military operations in the southeast, saying they, too, bore responsibility for fueling the violence.
On Russia’s state-run television, leading politicians and commentators said repeatedly Saturday that war crimes were being committed and that pro-Russia Ukrainians needed protection. The Rossiya 24 satellite channel turned its onscreen titles to black and gray in mourning for the people in Odessa.
But despite the steady public drumbeat and the vigor of Peskov’s statements, analysts said the Kremlin did not seem poised to intervene militarily yet.
OBSERVERS FREED
In the one diplomatic success of the day, the European military observers - four Germans, a Czech, a Pole and a Dane - were freed. Five Ukrainians accompanying the group were also released.
One observer from non-NATO member Sweden was released last Sunday.
The releases Saturday came after the arrival of a Kremlin envoy, Vladimir Lukin, in Donetsk, the regional center south of Slovyansk.
Thorbjorn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, said Lukin had secured the release of the group.
The insurgents’ leader in Slovyansk, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, said he ordered the releases because of increasing insecurity in the city. In recent days, at least four Ukrainian soldiers were killed on the city’s outskirts - two of them when the helicopters were shot down - and at least 10 civilians have been killed, Ponomarev said.
Ponomarev said the observers “are not being released - they are leaving us, as we promised them.”
One of the released observers, German Col. Axel Schneider, said the detainees held up well.
“They had a very good attitude, and that gave them the strength to stand the situation,” Schneider said of the observers. “According to the word of [Ponomarev], we have been treated as good as possible.”
The non-Ukrainians were flown late Saturday to Berlin, where they were reunited with their families.
“We are all very happy,” Schneider said at Tegel Airport. “We saw our families again - that’s not something we would have imagined last night.”
The German-led team was detained April 25 while working, under Ukrainian military invitation, to assess security conditions in eastern Ukraine. The mission was part of a process approved by the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to which Russia, Ukraine and the United States belong.
Germany is seen as a key player in trying to resolve the crisis, and Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously spoken of the need to release the observers. The degree to which the Kremlin holds sway over the militants in Slovyansk is not clear.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the release “was made after unambiguous instructions had been received from the Russian authorities, which yet again shows the extremists are subordinated to Moscow.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry, however, emphasized that the release was a decision of the insurgents who have taken control of Slovyansk and called it “testimony of the courage and humanism of the defenders.”
A spokesman for the self-declared authorities in Slovyansk would not comment on whether the militants still thought the observers were NATO spies, what led to the resolution or whether prisoners held by Ukraine’s government had been freed in exchange.
Kerry welcomed the release of the observers and condemned violence “by any side.”
“It’s a step,” he said. “But there are many other steps that need to be taken in order to be able to de-escalate the situation.”
Kerry spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov while flying from Ethiopia to Congo. Kerry said they discussed additional steps that need to be taken, and he said he made clear that it was critical for Russia “to withdraw support from separatists and to assist in removing people from the buildings.”
The secretary of state said he also raised the “reality” of new potential penalties by the West against specific sectors of the Russian economy.
Penalties imposed by the U.S. and EU have so far targeted officials, individuals and companies tied to Putin’s inner circle.
The next step would be action against sectors of the Russian economy, including banking and energy. But those penalties would also have consequences for European countries that have closer economic ties with Russia than the U.S. does.
Information for this article was contributed by Alison Smale, Andrew E. Kramer, C.J. Chivers, Noah Sneider, Sergey Ponomarev, Neil MacFarquhar, Alexandra Odynova and Melissa Eddy of The New York Times; by Jim Heintz, Peter Leonard, Kirsten Grieshaber and Lara Jakes of The Associated Press; by Michael Birnbaum, Simon Denyer,Anna Nemtsova, Karen DeYoung and William Branigin of The Washington Post; and by Kateryna Choursina, Henry Meyer, Ilya Arkhipov, Roger Runningen, Arne Delfs, Anastasia Ustinova, Patrick Donahue and Maciej Onoszko of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/04/2014