KRASNOHORIVKA/MARINKA, Ukraine - Valentina Moskalenko was all smiles beneath her white woven sunhat on Aug. 9 as she described the jubilation she felt when Ukrainian troops rolled in and reclaimed control over the quaint town of Krasnohorivka on the western edge of Donetsk earlier this week.
“I was trembling I was so excited!” the pensioner told the Kyiv Post about the day the government’s tanks arrived, their blue and yellow flags flapping in the wind. “I am for Ukraine. I told them [Russian-backed rebel fighters] ‘I don’t need you protecting my fatherland. It is already protected by our boys.'”
A proponent of President Petro Poroshenko, Moskalenko was waiting at a bus stop for her sister and brother-in-law to arrive home after spending more than a month at a small town on the Azov Sea. They fled after the rebels seized control of the city and positioned Grad rockets throughout the sprawling wheat fields on the edge of town.
“Look what they [the rebels] did,” Moskalenko said, gesturing to massive hole in the side of a four-story apartment building. “This was a provocation. They shot rockets here and then said our troops did this.”
Krasnohorivka is one of the latest victories in Ukraine’s four-month-long ‘anti-terrorist operation’ and a strategically important point on the western border of Donetsk. The military’s win here and in nearby Marinka this week has pushed the rebels back into Donetsk proper and brought the government forces as close in as the city’s boundary line.
They are now breathing down the necks of the rebels, who seem to have hidden themselves inside the city, hunkering down in preparation perhaps for a final standoff. The many thousands who openly roamed this metropolis of one million people days ago are now almost nowhere to be found.
Earlier on Aug. 9, Ukrainian troops pounded the rebels’ southern-most block post with Grad missiles. The Kyiv Post visited the block post mere minutes after they exploded just short of the rebel position on the highway and in nearby fields. Instead of stopping cars for inspections, jittery separatist fighters ushered traffic through so they could prepare for further attacks.
On the other side of the city, Kyiv’s forces worked to close off access to neighboring Luhansk. The military commander of the rebels in Donetsk said that the Ukrainian troops had recaptured the important junction town of Krasnyi Luch, Luhansk Oblast. Once ruled by separatist fighters, as well as Cossacks from Russia, the town “has been taken by the enemy,” Igor Strelkov, a Russian citizen whose real name is Girkin, conceded on Aug. 9.
The Kyiv Post could not confirm his report, and neither could Andriy Lysenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, who said in Kyiv that he was unsure whether government troops retook Krasnyi Luch.
“We give information on everything that has been fully liberated. As soon as some other cities are liberated, we will inform you of this. We cannot confirm this information so far,” Lysenko said. He did say, however, that troops had freed the towns of Kruhlyk and Miusynsk in Luhansk Oblast, as well as Panteleimonivka, Donetsk Oblast in the past 24 hours.
However, hours after Strelkov’s statement, rebels said they had reclaimed Krasnyi Luch. “According to preliminary data, Krasnyi Luch is cleared of enemy forces. The battle continues on the outskirts of the city and near Miusynsk from the east,” read a tweet from the official account of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.
With Ukrainian forces pressing down on the rebels, the newly appointed separatist leader in Donetsk Alexander Zakharchenko said he was ready for a ceasefire to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in the city.
“We hope that the international community will influence the bloodthirsty Kyiv government,” he told RIA Novosti.
The Ukrainian government did not immediately respond to Zakharchenko’s statement.
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 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.
