Shaky Start to Ukraine’s Military Push Amid Frayed Geneva Deal
Source: New York Times
SLOVYANSK, Ukraine — While Russia and the United States traded warnings and accusations over developments Wednesday in Ukraine, the promised Ukrainian military effort to reassert control over the restive eastern part of the country got off to a halting start, and the international agreement reached last week in Geneva that was meant to defuse the crisis in the country frayed even further.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry in Kiev said that it had flushed armed separatists out of Sviatogorsk, a town in the east near the stronghold of pro-Russian militants in Slovyansk, and that no one was hurt in the operation. But a Ukrainian military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the presence of the armed anti-Kiev opposition in the city had been minimal. “You cannot say that there had been a powerful outburst of separatism there,” he said.
At a Ukrainian military base near Kramatorsk, a short drive from Slovyansk, there was no sign on Wednesday that the government troops there were taking any action. The road leading to the main gate of the base was blocked by several rows of barricades constructed from tires, barbed wire and felled trees, with a small checkpoint flying a separatist flag.
At the base gate, a Ukrainian soldier who identified himself only as Maksim said that there were no plans to move against the anti-Kiev protesters and armed militants at the checkpoint or the government buildings that they have seized in about a dozen cities in the region.
“They are peaceful people,” he said.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/24/world/europe/shaky-start-to-ukraines-military-push-amid-frayed-geneva-deal.html?_r=0
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