Interior Minister Arsen Avakov announced on June 13 that Ukraine’s National Guard has relaunched its anti-terrorist operation in the port city of Mariupol in southern Donetsk Oblast.
In June 13, Avakov wrote on his Facebook page that the operation “is aimed at liquidating a Donetsk People’s Republic terrorist stronghold…the operation area in the center of Mariupol has been cordoned off.”
According to Avakov, the ATO, which began its “active phase” at 4:50 a.m., is ongoing, and is proceeding “according to plan.” He deemed the operation “successful.”
Though Avakov wrote that two Ukrainian troops had been injured and none killed, a statement on the National Guard’s official website said that four troops were wounded, and one remains in critical condition.
The interior minister noted that separatist casualties were “high.”
He said that National Guard troops captured 11 rebels, destroyed one separatist armored reconnaissance vehicle and took out several sniper perches on their way to securing “all key strongholds” in the city.
Timothy Ash, an analyst at Standard Bank in London, wrote on June 13 that “This fresh outbreak of violence is a step back” for Mariupol, which is hope to some of billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s Metinvest plants. “It had appeared to have been stabilised after miners/steelworkers had launched joint patrols with police to get rid of bandits.”
Ash argued that the violence in Mariupol “underscores the difficulties of enforcing any kind of ceasefire on the ground.”
The Ukrainian National Guard battles with separatists for control of Mariupol
The renewed operation comes as reports emerged about Russian tanks crossing the border into Ukraine. Reuters said that their correspondents had seen two tanks in Snizhnye, a city near the border between Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, but could not identify whether they were Russian or Ukrainian, or where they had come from.
Konstantin Mashovets, a former Defense Ministry employee who now works as a military analyst at Dmitry Tymchuk’s Center for Military and Political Studies, said that the tanks are T-64s, not T-72s, as many had speculated. In a Facebook post, Mashovets wrote that the tanks were likely from a brigade stationed in Crimea.
Top Ukrainian officials, including Avakov, have accused the Russian government of failing to secure the border between the two countries, and of allowing lethal and non-lethal aid to be delivered to separatists.
According to Reuters, Avakov told reporters in Kyiv on June 12, “We have observed columns passing with armoured personnel carriers, other armoured vehicles and artillery pieces, and tanks which, according to our information, came across the border and this morning were in Snizhnye.”
Ash, noted that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Russian President Vladimir Putin in the evening on June 12 to protest the passage of tanks from Russia to Ukraine.
“Poroshenko’s peace push, initiated in Normandy last week, does not appear to be making much progress, said Ash.”
Despite the tank trouble, order seems to have been restored in Mariupol: in his Facebook post, Avakov wrote that the Ukrainian flag is now flying over the city.
Since the Ukrainian government launched its anti-terrorist operation in April, 66 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed.
Kyiv Post staff writer Isaac Webb can be reached at [email protected] and on twitter at @isaacdwebb
