Even as Russian forces mass on Ukraine’s border, the spotlight this week has swung back to the rumbling low-intensity war in eastern Ukraine and its possible role in setting the stage for a broader conflict.
Over the past three days, there has been an upsurge in shelling along several parts of the front lines. The Ukrainians say shelling by the Russian-backed separatists is at its highest in nearly three years, and for their part the separatists allege the use of heavy weapons by Ukrainian armed forces against civilian areas. On Thursday, a kindergarten in Ukrainian-controlled territory less than 5 kilometers from the front line was hit. On Friday and Saturday, the Ukrainian authorities reported a further spike of shelling by heavy weaponry, which is banned from within 50 kilometers of the front lines by the Minsk Agreements. Ukrainian authorities say there were 60 breaches of a ceasefire on Thursday, many of them by heavy weapons. The leaders of the two breakaway pro-Russian territories — which call themselves the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics — claimed the Ukrainians are planning a large military offensive in the area. On Friday they organized mass evacuations of civilians to Russia, while instructing men to remain and take up arms. Ukrainian officials repeatedly deny any such plans. On Friday, the head of Ukraine’s National Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, said: «There is a great danger that the representatives of the Russian Federation who are there will provoke certain things. They can do things that have nothing to do with our military.» Danilov did not provide evidence but added: «We can’t say what exactly they are going to do — whether to blow up buses with people who are planned to be evacuated to the Rostov region, or to blow up houses — we don’t know.» Danilov spoke just hours after the mysterious explosion in a vehicle belonging to a senior official in the city of Donetsk, close to the separatists’ headquarters. The region’s leader, Denis Pushilin, called it an act of terrorism. But Ukrainian authorities and western officials said it was a staged provocation — designed perhaps to justify a Russian intervention. After being relatively quiet for much of this year, the «line of contact» has been much more active in the past few days — as the future of Ukraine’s breakaway regions becomes entangled in a much broader range of Russian grievances and demands.
