Cease-Fire in Ukraine Falters as Rebels Down Copter, Government SaysBy ANDREW ROTH and NEIL MacFARQUHARJUNE 24, 2014
DONETSK, Ukraine — A cease-fire agreement between combatants in eastern Ukraine appeared shaky on Tuesday as separatist rebels shot down a Ukrainian military helicopter, according to a spokesman for the Ukrainian Army. All nine aboard are feared dead, he said.
The MI-8 helicopter was carrying equipment and specialists to monitor the fragile cease-fire near the rebel-held city of Slavyansk, a center of the conflict, when it was struck by a missile fired from a man-portable air defense system, the spokesman, Vladislav Seleznyov, said in a statement posted online. The rebels did not immediately confirm the attack.
The missile strike came as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said the temporary cease-fire, agreed to a day earlier by Russia, Ukraine and the pro-Russian rebels, should be extended, and signaled his interest in negotiations to end the fighting.
Hours earlier, Mr. Putin sent a request to the upper chamber of Russia’s Parliament asking that it rescind a March 1 resolution authorizing the use of the country’s armed forces in Ukraine, his spokesman said.
Those developments followed a warning by the United States and some European leaders that Russia faced a third, stiffer round of economimc sanctions, specifically targeting sectors like banking and high technology, if it did not do more to end the Ukraine crisis. European leaders are due to discuss the sanctions during a summit in Brussels on Friday.
Speaking in Vienna, where he had gone to shore up support for a new, southern route for Russian gas exports in the face of European opposition, Mr. Putin said the cease-fire, which was supposed to last through Friday, was evidently insufficient.
Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, was quoted by Russian media as saying that Mr. Putin had sent a formal request “aimed at normalizing the situation in the eastern regions of Ukraine” in response to the beginning of “trilateral negotiations on this matter.”
The move was largely symbolic — Mr. Putin can get whatever he needs from the rubber-stamp Parliament at any time. But it had been one step requested by the United States and by other Western powers to indicate that Moscow was serious in seeking a negotiated solution to the conflict in Ukraine.
Russia had been pressuring Ukraine to talk directly to the rebels, and Mr. Putin’s public move to take the Russian armed forces out of the equation was evidently a means to endorse the first results from the talks.
The attack on the helicopter took place close to 5 p.m. from hills in the town of Karachun on the outskirts of Slavyansk, Mr. Seleznyov said. Slavyansk, which has undergone the heaviest fighting in the two-month conflict, is defended by a rebel outfit run by a shadowy military commander named Igor Strelkov who was not present at negotiations on the cease-fire in the eastern city of Donetsk on Monday evening.
But an aide to the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic said in an interview that Mr. Strelkov was aware of the temporary truce.
Mr. Putin’s decision to rescind the resolution on the use of force will put added pressure on President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine to negotiate directly with the separatists, who have been waging an armed campaign for increased autonomy for the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.
In announcing a 15-point peace plan on Friday, and again in a speech to the nation on Saturday, Mr. Poroshenko ruled out talks with those who had taken up arms against the Ukrainian government. The separatists in turn rejected the idea of talking directly with the government in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.
Mr. Putin cautiously endorsed the plan over the weekend, but demanded direct talks. President Obama spoke by telephone on Monday with Mr. Putin, and the White House said Mr. Obama had pressed Mr. Putin to aid Mr. Poroshenko’s efforts to defuse the crisis.
The West had been threatening a third round of far more serious sanctions against Russia in sectors like finance and high technology if the fighting in southeastern Ukraine did not stop. The West has accused Moscow of supporting, if not directing, the separatist movement by dispatching Russian mercenaries. Moscow has denied any direct role and has said it has no control over volunteer fighters.
Earlier Tuesday, Mr. Seleznyov said in an interview that rebels had continued using mortars to attack several government checkpoints near Slavyansk, but that no one there had been injured in the shelling. He said there was also isolated fighting near the border between Russia and Ukraine, and an unspecified number of injured.
In Kiev, Mr. Poroshenko issued a statement calling the move by Mr. Putin “the first practical step” by Moscow to resolve the crisis in the east since the Russian leader endorsed the peace plan over the weekend.
The collapse of the cease-fire agreement illustrated the depth of distrust between the government in Kiev and the patchwork of militias and rebellious political organizations that have laid siege to eastern Ukraine. Even before the helicopter attack, there were accusations and counteraccusations about violations of the cease-fire.
No sooner had the announcement of Mr. Putin’s request been made than a representative of the upper house of Parliament, known as the Federation Council, said it would be passed. The representative, Andrei Klimov, the deputy head of the council’s foreign affairs committee, said that it would back the decision and that the full council would reverse its March 1 vote on Wednesday, according to the news agency Interfax.
The separatist leaders met on Monday in Donetsk with Leonid D. Kuchma, a former president of Ukraine who is acting as the main representative for the Kiev government; the Russian ambassador in Ukraine; and an envoy from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The talks were scheduled to continue on Tuesday.
The Poroshenko peace plan proposes amnesty for rebel fighters who have not committed serious crimes, as well as safe passage for mercenaries seeking to return home to Russia. It also calls for decentralization of the national government, which would allow for greater self-rule in the east, a key Russian demand.
On Monday, the foreign ministers of the 28-member European Union said they would send a training mission later this summer to help Ukraine reform its police force and to implement the rule of law. The police are considered widely corrupt and often evaporate in clashes between supporters and opponents of the government.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement saying that by sending such a mission, the European Union would be taking on a “considerable share” of responsibility for the security situation in the country, and that law and order should be applied equally to all citizens.
At their meeting on Monday, the European foreign ministers imposed a ban on importing goods made in Crimea and the port of Sevastopol, where Russia has its Black Sea fleet. Russia annexed Crimea, then a Ukrainian region, in March. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, who has been shuttling for months to try to defuse the Ukraine crisis, headed to Kiev once more on Tuesday to try to build on the progress made with the cease-fire.
The ban on imports from Crimea was intended to send “a very, very clear signal that the annexation of Crimea by Russia has not been recognized, and will not be,” said one official, speaking on condition that he not be identified because of the delicate diplomacy involved.
European Union leaders also intend to step up contingency planning for next winter, given the current Russian blockade on natural gas deliveries to Ukraine, which is also the main transit route for energy supplies to European nations farther to the West.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement criticizing the European Union’s ban on Crimean goods, calling it “completely unacceptable” and a blow against ordinary people there.
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