"A Ukrainian military helicopter has been shot down by rebels over Slavyansk amid heavy fighting around the insurgent-held city in eastern
Ukraine.
Ukraine's acting president, Oleksandr Turchynov, said 14 people on board, including an army general, were killed when the helicopter was shot down on Thursday. He told the parliament in Kiev that rebels used a portable air defence missile to down the aircraft.
An Associated Press reporter witnessed the helicopter being shot down. It was not immediately clear exactly where it fell.
Slavyansk has become the centre of fighting between pro-
Russiainsurgents and government forces in recent weeks. The city, located 100 miles (160km) west of the Russian border, has seen constant clashes and its residential areas have often come under mortar shelling from government forces, prompting some residents to flee.
The Kiev government has condemned the insurgency in east Ukraine as the work of "terrorists" bent on destroying the country and blames Russia for fomenting it. Moscow denies the accusations, saying it has no influence over rebels, who insist they are only protecting the interests of the Russian-speaking population of the east. However, fighters from Russia, including the battle-hardened region of Chechnya, have been appearing recently in the ranks of the separatists.
A tense standoff developed on Thursday afternoon outside the Donetsk regional administration building, which pro-Russian rebels have been occupying since April. The dispute between locals and a group including many volunteers from Russia appeared to be a sign of growing divisions within the rebel camp.
Armed and masked men of the Vostok Battalion, including a large contingent of Russians who were greeted as heroes when they appeared in Donetsk on Sunday, arrived at the building in cars, a van and a fighting infantry vehicle. They set up a perimeter around the barricades and trained their machine guns on the regional HQ, while snipers appeared briefly on a nearby apartment building roof.
One of the commanders of the men outside the building who identified himself only as Maksim said they had come to resolve a dispute about looting.
"Negotiations are taking place," he said. "I can't say how they will end."
Klavdia Kulbatskaya, a spokeswoman for the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, said the Vostok Battalion men were "checking" rebels from the Donbass People's Militia who had been accused of looting yesterday. She denied there was a power struggle between different rebel groups and didn't know what punishment could be meted out to the violators.
"It's purely a struggle against looting," she said.
Pro-Russian rebels and local citizens in Donetsk began to bury their dead on Thursday after vicious fighting with Ukrainian government forces on Sunday and Monday.
Morgue workers and rebels outside the Kalinin morgue said more than 50 people had been killed in the fighting near the Sergei Prokofiev airport outside the city. At least one civilian was reportedly killed in the crossfire, but most of those dead were volunteer fighters from Russia, including members of a group from the Chechen republic, where Russia put down two bloody insurgencies in the 1990s and early 2000s.
A member of the Vostok Battalion said 33 Russian citizens had been identified among the dead. Thirty coffins were stacked outside the morgue. Alexander Borodai, the prime minster of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, told journalists that the 33 bodies would be taken in a convoy to be buried in Russia.
The Vostok Battalion fighter, a Russian citizen who identified himself only by his nickname, "Ram," said he had known several of those killed. He accused Ukrainian forces of shooting at civilians and said heavy losses at the airport had only hardened the rebels' resolve.
"No one is talking about surrendering. They've gotten angry, and this will be reflected in battle," he said, adding that the rebels' ranks were growing.
A group of residents took the body of Mark Zveryev, 43, a taxi driver who was killed with pro-Russian forces near the airport on Monday, to a local cemetery to be buried. Zveryev left behind a wife, a teenage son and a teenage stepdaughter, according to friends.
an insurgent leader in eastern Ukraine who said his fighters
were holding four observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe promised that they would be released imminently.
Vyacheslav Ponomarev, the self-proclaimed "people's mayor" of Slavyansk, told AP the monitors – who were from Turkey, Switzerland, Estonia and Denmark – were safe.
"I addressed the OSCE mission to warn them that their people should not over the coming week travel in areas under our control. And they decided to show up anyway," Ponomarev said.
"We will deal with this and then release them," he said, without setting any specific time frame.
The OSCE said it lost contact with one of its four-man monitoring teams in Donetsk on Monday evening. Rebels have previously kidnapped military observers working under the auspices of the OSCE.
The OSCE observers were deployed to Ukraine to monitor the security situation following Russia's annexation of Crimea and a pro-Russia separatist insurgency that has engulfed regions in the east of the country. They also observed Sunday's presidential vote, won by billionaire confectionery magnate
Petro Poroshenko.
Poroshenko, who is due to be inaugurated by 8 June, has promised to negotiate with people in the east, where insurgents have seized government buildings and fought government troops for a month and a half. But he also vowed to continue a military operation to uproot the armed rebels and bring it to a quick end.
In the most ferocious battle yet, rebels in Donetsk tried to take control of its airport on Monday but were repelled by Ukrainian forces using combat jets and helicopter gunships. Dozens of men were killed and some morgues were overflowing on Tuesday. Some insurgent leaders said up to 100 fighters may have been killed.
The mood in Donetsk was calm on Thursday, although many businesses have stopped opening their doors for fear of renewed fighting.
Pro-Russia separatists have declared the Donetsk and Luhansk regions independent of Ukraine. They have pleaded to join Russia, but Vladimir Putin has ignored their appeal in an apparent bid to defuse tensions with the west and avoid a new round of western sanctions.
The Russian president has supported an OSCE peace plan that calls for ending hostilities and launching a political dialogue. Russia also said it would be ready to work with Poroshenko, but strongly urged the Ukrainian government to end its military operation in the east".
Source: theguardian
