YASYNUVATA, Ukraine – Ukrainian forces made big advances into rebel-controlled territory on Sunday, assaulting Russian-backed fighters with heavy artillery, even as was one of their planes was shot down in a push toward the stronghold cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a tweet Sunday afternoon that government troops had reclaimed Yasynuvata, a strategically important city with a rail junction that borders Donetsk to the north.
Around 100 long-faced rebels were strategizing on a road behind a tree line on the southern outskirts of the town near a convoy of trucks and beaten-up cars, some of them camouflaged. They told Mashable that they had been under artillery, mortar and sniper fire all day.
Less than half a mile ahead, beyond the blazing flame of a coking plant and across rusty railroad tracks, those scurrying back from the front line said Ukrainian tanks were less than 2 miles away in the center of Yasynuvata.
Three of the fighters held Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifles, while another had his arms full of rocket-propelled grenades. Others carried AK-74 automatic rifles fitted with grenade launchers slung over their shoulders, as they ducked and dashed toward a bridge that demarcated their new line.
Thick black smoke rose from the canal beneath the bridge, as bursts from small arms –- punctuated by the thuds of artillery fire -– rang out.
Ukraine also claimed to have taken control of Zhovtnevy, a residential district of the eastern-most rebel bastion Luhansk, where it raised the blue-and-yellow national flag on Sunday, according to Andriy Lysenko, a military spokesperson.
Due to heavy fighting in recent weeks, Luhansk has been without electricity, telecommunications and running water for 14 days, the city council reported. In response, Russia sent a 262-truck convoy of humanitarian aid to the region. But the trucks have been stuck in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky on the Russian side of the border, where Ukrainian border and customs officials were set to begin inspecting them in small groups.
Kiev has feared the trucks to be a Russian Trojan horse, while Moscow has insisted that they are carrying only aid. As the trucks arrived at the border on Thursday evening, two British journalists observed a separate column of 23 military vehicles passing into Ukraine from Russia, marking the first time such a column has been seen doing so.
Kiev later reported it had used artillery to destroy a “significant” portion of that convoy, but came up short in providing evidence of the attack.
Earlier on Sunday, Russian-backed rebels shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 warplane, as it carried out “an assignment to eliminate a large group of terrorists” in the Luhansk region, Ukrainian military spokesperson Oleksiy Dmitrashkovsky said, adding that the pilot managed to parachute to safety.
In Kiev, Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council spokesperson told journalists that additional Russian military equipment was seen coming into Ukraine from Russia in the past 24 hours, including three Grad multiple missile launch systems. Russian drones also violated Ukrainian air space at least 10 times during the same period, he said.
On the highway from Donetsk to Snizhne, which connects the region to Luhansk, Mashable observed several convoys of military vehicles moving east and west on Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday, nine rebel tanks, four large armored personnel carriers and dozens of fighters rushed back and forth down a corridor that links the stronghold of Donetsk to Russia. Russian and Soviet flags flew from some of the armored vehicles, while others sported the mark of eastern Ukrainian fight club Oplot, whose leader Alexander Zakharchenko was appointed the new prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic last week.
On Sunday evening, Mashable saw three trucks transporting self-propelled artillery, along with a surface-to-air gun and two military trucks carrying fighters, rolling west into Donetsk.
A day earlier, Zakharchenko boasted of “good news.” New military hardware, he said, was en route to the besieged rebel-controlled territories from Russia.
“At present, moving towards the corridor [from Russia to Ukraine] are ... 150 items of military hardware, 30 of which are tanks and the rest are infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers,” Zakharchenko tells other rebel leaders in a video published on YouTube. Traveling with the military column are 1,200 personnel who “trained for four months” in Russia, he adds.
In Berlin, top diplomats from Ukraine and Russia were due to hold talks with their French and German counterparts, with the aim of ending the months-long conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 lives, according to the United Nations.
“Flying to Berlin. The talks will not be easy. It is important to stop the flow of weapons and mercenaries from Russia,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin tweeted.