KIEV, Ukraine -- Pro-Russia separatists said Saturday that they had trapped thousands of Ukrainian government troops in the course of fierce fighting in Ukraine's troubled east.
"We have practically encircled from 8,000 to 10,000 Kiev junta troops in the area around Debaltseve," said Eduard Basurin, chief political officer of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic armed forces. "The only road connecting them with the other troops is day and night under our close artillery fire, and they can survive only if they raise a white flag and surrender."
Ukraine regular troops refused to surrender, Basurin said, "so we will have to destroy all of them."
Basurin said both sides suffered heavy casualties in the last three days of fighting around Debaltseve but would not provide a specific number. Fifteen Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the fighting and 30 were wounded, said Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak.
"This happened along the entire line of conflict, starting from the Luhansk region and ending in Mariupol," he said.
Twelve civilians were also killed by the artillery fire near Debaltseve, Donetsk region Police Chief Vyacheslav Abroskin wrote on his Facebook account. At least 310 residents of Debaltseve were evacuated from the scene of the fighting Saturday; about 1,000 others were evacuated from the area in previous days, said a statement posted on the Ukraine Security and Defense Council's official website.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in a telephone conversation, all expressed hope that negotiations in Minsk, Belarus, will focus on a cease-fire and pulling out heavy weaponry from residential areas, the Kremlin said.
However, representatives for the rebels, Russia, Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe left the government compound late Saturday evening after spending four hours in a private meeting.
Ukraine's envoy, Leonid Kuchma, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that the talks were derailed after the rebel representatives "refused to discuss steps to bring a complete cease-fire and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry."
A Ukrainian senior military commander conceded that the situation at Debaltseve was complicated but said it was "not critical."
"We are firmly holding our defense positions along the entire front lines from Donetsk to Mariupol, and none of our contingents or groups have yet been encircled," said Gen.-Maj. Alexander Rozmaznin. "The enemy controls half of [Vuhlehirsk] where we are engaged in heavy street fighting but there is no chance they can enter Debaltseve."
The general said the separatists were heavily armed and fortified by Russian T-72 and T-80 tanks and sophisticated Russian artillery systems. He also said hundreds of Russian regular troops were fighting alongside the separatists.
"We fully understand that today we are mostly fighting against Russian regular troops and their quite professional artillery and tank crews," Rozmaznin said. "We know that they are maneuvering to entrap our forces, but we are prepared for it and they are already feeling our powerful response and retreating, sustaining heavy casualties."
A T-72 tank crew was captured Saturday and was being interrogated, Poltorak said in televised remarks. Russia has repeatedly said it is not providing military assistance or troops to the separatists and has insisted that separatists used T-64 tanks they had captured from Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian army doesn't have T-72 or T-80 tanks.
The truce agreed upon in Minsk in September had been violated many times and was discarded by both sides in recent days as heavy fighting broke out in locations including the Donetsk airport, where the Ukrainian army lost several key buildings.
"In the course of the past 24 hours the situation has rapidly deteriorated in eastern Ukraine, impacting innocent civilians," the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said on its official website Saturday. "Lives have been lost, and many have been injured."
Since the conflict started in April, it has claimed more than 5,100 lives and displaced more than 900,000 people across the country, according to United Nations estimates.
Information for this article was contributed by Victoria Butenko and Sergei L. Loiko of the Los Angeles Times and by Peter Leonard, Yuras Karmanau, Sergei Grits and Nataliya Vasilyeva of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/01/2015