Ukraine, Russia blame each other for shootout

A Ukranian Police Officer takes pictures of evidence after a night fight at the check point, which was under the control of pro-Russian activists in the village of Bulbasika near Slovyansk, Ukraine, Sunday, April 20, 2014.(AP Photo/Manu Brabo)
A Ukranian Police Officer takes pictures of evidence after a night fight at the check point, which was under the control of pro-Russian activists in the village of Bulbasika near Slovyansk, Ukraine, Sunday, April 20, 2014.(AP Photo/Manu Brabo)

BYLBASIVKA, Ukraine - Ukraine and Russia traded blame Sunday for a shootout at a checkpoint manned by pro-Russia insurgents in eastern Ukraine that left at least three people dead and others with gunshot wounds.

The identity of the attackers is unclear. Russia blamed militant Ukrainian nationalists, and the Ukrainian government said the attack near the city of Slovyansk was staged by provocateurs from outside the country.

The armed clash appeared to be the first since an international agreement was reached last week in Geneva to ease tensions in eastern Ukraine, where armed pro-Russia activists have seized government buildings in at least 10 cities.

Ukraine and many in the West fear that such clashes could provide a pretext for Russia to seize more Ukrainian territory.

Russia, which annexed the peninsula of Crimea last month, has tens of thousands of troops along its border with Ukraine. Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, originally said the troops were there for military exercises, but Putin’s spokesman Saturday acknowledged that some were there because of instability in eastern Ukraine.

The self-proclaimed mayor of Slovyansk appealed to Russia on Sunday to send in peacekeeping troops.

“They are killing our brothers,” Vyacheslav Ponomaryov said during a news conference in Slovyansk shown on Russian state television. “Fascists and imperialists are trying to conquer us by killing and injuring civilians. They want to make slaves from us. They are not negotiating with us - they are simply killing us.”

Yuri Zhadobin, who coordinates the pro-Russia unit manning the checkpoint in the village of Bylbasivka, said he was with about 20 men celebrating Easter when unknown individuals drove up in four vehicles and opened fire about 3 a.m.

“We began to shoot back from behind the barricades, and we threw Molotov cocktails at them,” Zhadobin said. Two of the vehicles caught fire and the attackers fled in the other two, he said.

Some of his men were wounded and one later died in the hospital, he said.

The Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s office in the eastern Donetsk region later released a statement saying three people had died in the attack and three others were wounded. The statement said some of the attackers also were killed or wounded, but the number was not known.

Russian state media reported five people dead, including three pro-Russia activists.

Moscow quickly took the side of the pro-Russia activists. In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry said “innocent civilians” were attacked by “militants” of the Right Sector, a nationalist Ukrainian group that has supported the interim government in Kiev but is not part of it.

“The Russian side is enraged by the militant provocation, which is an indication of the reluctance of the authorities in Kiev to bridle and disarm nationalists and extremists,” a ministry statement read. “Local residents seized the vehicles of the attackers in which they discovered arms, aerial maps of the area and Right Sector paraphernalia.”

But a spokesman for Right Sector, Artyom Skoropatskiy, denied involvement in Sunday’s shootout, which he called a provocation staged by Russian special services.

Ukraine’s Security Service also called the attack a “cynical provocation” staged from “the outside.”

Viktoria Syumar, first deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council in Kiev, said on her Facebook page that Russia’s accusation and statements show it is preparing to invade Ukraine.

Putin has rejected claims that Russian special forces are directing or encouraging the insurgents. Putin has said he hopes not to send troops into eastern Ukraine, but he retains the right to intervene to protect ethnic Russians living here.

Russian state media have been feeding fears among the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine that their lives are in danger because of the Right Sector.

“See what is happening?” asked Andrei Zarubin, 30, who went to the Bylbasivka checkpoint Sunday afternoon to replace those who had come under attack. “Russia should defend us … who else can we turn to for help?”

Ukrainian Defense Ministry spokesman Dmytro Horbunov said in a telephone interview with Channel 5 television Sunday that there have been three to four cases of “provocations” by unknown people against Ukrainian military outposts in the Luhansk region in the eastern part of the country. The provocations consisted of throwing rocks and fireworks, the spokesman said.

With separatists holding their ground in several eastern cities, the prospect for a smallscale civil war has increased, said Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University in Washington.

“I see this as a creeping destabilization,” Stent said Sunday. “I’m not sure it’s a civil war yet, but the pre-conditions for a civil war are there.”

Nothing has been done to implement the agreement reached in Geneva last week among the U.S., European Union, Russia and Ukraine that was aimed at defusing the crisis, she said.

“I see nothing that persuades me that anyone will be able to dislodge these people,” Stent said of the pro-Russia separatists who have occupied government buildings in the Russian-speaking east.

Two members of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee called Sunday for beefing up Western sanctions against Russia to include its petrochemical and banking industries and warned that Moscow thus far has ignored U.S. and European efforts to persuade it to back off its confrontation with Ukraine.

“We’ve helped in many ways to create the problems that exist there. And to leave them alone in the manner that we’re leaving them alone to me is just unconscionable,” Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, the committee’s senior Republican member, said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “I don’t think Putin really believes we’re going to punish them in that way.”

Corker, who plans to be in the region in May, said that unless the Russians “immediately begin moving the 40,000 troops on the border which are intimidating people in Ukraine, unless they begin immediately moving them away, I really do believe we should be sanctioning some of the companies in the energy sector, Gazprom and others. I think we should hit some of the large banks there.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., a member of the same committee, said, “I think the time is now to rapidly ratchet up our sanctions, whether it’s on Russian petrochemical companies or on Russian banks.

“If Russia does get away with this, I do think that there’s a potential that a NATO ally is next. And, yes, there will be economic pain to Europe [under tightened sanctions]. But it’s time for them to lead as well.”

President Barack Obama has said his administration is prepared to take further action against Russia if diplomatic efforts to destabilize the conflict fail.

Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak, said new economic sanctions on his country would amount to “the revival of the Cold War mentality” and would be counterproductive.

“We can withstand pressures,” Kislyak said on Fox News Sunday. Claims that Putin seeks to restore the former Soviet Union are “a false notion,” and Russia seeks only to ensure that Ukraine becomes “a country that is democratic, that supports the rights of all the ethnic groups, including certainly Russia’s, and we want to have a friendly neighbor,” Kislyak said.

Information for this article was contributed by Yuras Karmanau and staff members of The Associated Press; by Kateryna Choursina, David Lerman, Jake Rudnitsky, Jason Corcoran and Daryna Krasnolutska of Bloomberg News; and by William Booth of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/21/2014

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