Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko dismissed Defense Minister Valeriy Heletey on Sunday after Russia announced it was pulling back forces from Ukraine's borders.
Poroshenko said he'll present a new defense minister candidate to parliament in Kiev today and that he expects to win approval for the person, whom he didn't identify, on Tuesday. This will "strengthen power structures and defense capability of Ukraine," Poroshenko said in the statement published on his website.
The new military chief will be Ukraine's fourth defense minister since the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February. Heletey came under criticism after Ukrainian armed forces losses in a pro-Russia separatist offensive in late August. Poroshenko fired the head of Ukraine's border guard service last week and replaced the governor of the war-torn Donetsk region.
Ukraine, the U.S. and the European Union accuse Russia of providing weapons, financing and troops to the separatists, an allegation Moscow denies. The two sides imposed tit-for-tat sanctions that have depressed economic growth in both the European Union and Russia, causing the latter to flirt with a recession.
President Vladimir Putin late Saturday ordered Russian forces to withdraw from Ukraine's borders. About 17,600 soldiers, who were on drills since the summer in the Rostov region, are to be redeployed at their permanent bases, according to a statement on the Kremlin's website. Russian soldiers have started their withdrawal, state-owned newswire RIA Novosti reported today, citing the Defense Ministry in Moscow.
"We've seen this before with Putin withdrawing and then sending back forces," Joerg Forbrig, senior program officer for central and eastern Europe at the Berlin Bureau of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., said by phone. "Winter is coming, and it's good for the morale of Russian troops and their families to go to their home bases and not camp out."
Separatists made 36 assaults on government positions in the past 24 hours, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said on Facebook. Rebels also used anti-tank missiles, artillery and mortars in fighting at Donetsk airport and near Debaltsevo, Avdiyivka and Shchastya. Rebels also fired mortars in the Luhansk region.
Twelve civilians, including six women and one child, have been killed in shelling attacks on Donetsk residential areas during the past 24 hours, Interfax said, citing information from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic news service. Two people were injured in shelling Sunday, the Donetsk city council said on its website.
"We still haven't banished the threat of a new escalation," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in an interview Sunday with Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper.
While a cease-fire, sealed Sept. 5, has reduced the bloodshed in Ukraine's easternmost regions, it's been broken by almost daily violence. There have been at least 331 deaths since the deal was agreed, the United Nations estimates.
"I am ready to pull back troops if the Ukrainian military fulfills its commitments," Vladimir Kononov, the Donetsk People's Republic defense minister, said Saturday on the republic's website. "Unfortunately, they don't fulfill them," and "until the Ukrainian army pulls back its heavy artillery and its large amounts of armored vehicles, there can be no talk of us pulling back."
Donetsk Airport, which has been the scene of almost daily fighting, is still under control of Ukrainian government forces, though separatists say they have seized large parts of it.
"Donetsk Airport is destroyed as a strategic object of infrastructure," Oleksandr Kikhtenko, the governor of Donetsk, who was appointed by Poroshenko on Friday, said an in interview with Kiev's Zerkalo Nedeli newspaper.
Information for this article was contributed by Kateryna Choursina, Daryna Krasnolutska and Ksenia Galouchko of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/13/2014