MARINKA, Ukraine – For three straight days, rockets have bombarded the quiet residential Petrovskyi district on the southwestern edge of Donetsk and the neighboring town of Mariinka, reducing apartment blocks, supermarkets, vehicles and a kindergarten to scorched rubble and killing at least six civilians.
One of them was
Tatyana Piskunova, the 32-year-old wife of Vladimir Viktorovich Piskunov, 39.
With rockets raining down all around at about 3:30 p.m. on July 12, she darted
to the cellar of the home the two of them built together in 2007.
Just then, a rocket
ripped through the roof, exploding on the front porch and sending shrapnel
flying. Two more quickly followed. Struck all over her body, in a last ditch
attempt to make it to safety, Piskunova dragged herself toward the two-foot
wide cellar opening. But she never reached it.
On July 13, Piskunov,
who said he was certain that Ukrainian government forces fired the rockets,
pointed to the place nearby where she bled to death. Her body had been taken
away, but flies buzzed over the bloodstains and streaked fingerprints left
behind. The couple’s dog was also killed in the blast.
With no home, no
wife and less than half a garden, Piskunov said there was nothing he could do
now, other than “I guess… take a gun and fight with them (pro-Russian rebels). I only see one (option):
to pick up a gun and fight,” he said.
While it remains uncertain which side fired the rockets that leveled much of Marinka and nearby Petrovskyi district – each side blames the other and both hold positions within striking distance – they come amid a new push by Ukrainian forces towards the pro-Russian separatist stronghold of Donetsk.
Rebels consolidated their militia in the regional capital and neighboring Horlivka after fleeing Sloviansk, a city of some 120,000 people that was their former command center and the front line of the conflict for three months, on July 5. They also still hold neighboring Luhansk. Following the rebels’ retreat, Ukrainian forces edged closer to Donetsk – to within 20 kilometers of the city center.
Columns of dozens of armored personnel vehicles, artillery and Grad rocket systems were observed moving north from the seaside city of Mariupol and west from the direction of Krasnoarmiysk towards Donetsk this week.
They stopped just short of the city limits, establishing new positions from which they have fired rockets at rebel posts, soldiers and residents told the Kyiv Post on July 13.
Ruslan, who identified himself only as a Ukrainian army soldier and did not give his last name because he was not authorized to speak with the press, commands a motley crew of troops at a position about 15 kilometers southwest of the Donetsk city line.
There, amid rolling fields of sunflowers and roadways barricaded by sandbags adorned with bullet-riddled helmets as decoration, he confirmed the use of Grad rockets, but said they were only fired at “specific” rebel targets and never at locations populated with civilians.
“Yes, we use Grads [rockets]. This is no secret,” he said. “But we are firing them at locations where there are no civilians.”
Standing amid shattered glass and the twisted metal remains of rockets, Marinka residents said otherwise.
“The Ukrainian army killed a man yesterday… the top of his head was blown off,” said one man, who was working with a group of others to remove debris from the front of a cafe. He declined to give his last name for fear of reprisals.
Another, an Armenian named Garik, who gave the Kyiv Post a tour of the demolished area, said that a man named Viktor Belotserkovskiy, a second-floor neighbor of his at Zavadskaya 6, had also been killed in the rocket attack on July 13.
“He was a good guy,” he said of Belotserkovskiy. “He had kids… he just worked.”
Elsewhere, there was more bickering and confusion over an attack on the city of Donetsk in Russia’s Rostov region on July 13, which killed a Russian man and wounded two women. The event threatened to further raise tensions between the two countries. Kyiv has blamed Moscow for fomenting unrest and supporting the separatist uprising that has plagued Ukraine for more than three months.
The Kremlin blamed Ukrainian forces for shelling the courtyard of their residential building – on Russian soil – and called the incident a “provocation,” saying that it could have “irreversible consequences” for Kyiv.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin described it as an “extremely dangerous escalation for Russian citizens on Russian territory.”
“The conversation with the Ukrainian side on this issue will be serious and tough.” he reportedly told Russian radio.
For its part, Kyiv denied Moscow’s accusations. Ukrainian Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said government forces were not firing on Russian territory. “The forces of the anti-terrorist operation do not fire on the territory of a neighbouring country and they do not fire on residential areas,” he said.
“We have many examples of terrorists carrying out provocative shooting, including into Russian territory, and then accusing Ukrainian forces of it.”
Kyiv
Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at
@ChristopherJM.
Editor’s Note: This article has
been produced with travel support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented
by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media
Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for
International Development. The content is independent of these organizations
and is solely the responsibility of the Kyiv Post.
