The head of an OSCE team released by pro-Russia rebels in eastUkraine on Saturday has described how he and his colleagues faced a "constantly growing threat" as the situation deteriorated around them.
"The proverbial fire of handguns and artillery came closer and closer," said Colonel Axel Schneider at a press conference in Berlin on Saturday night. "But we were condemned to inaction. Anyone who hasn't gone through something like this can't imagine what it was like."
Schneider said his team had been allowed constant contact with the OSCE and their families throughout their capture.
Krzysztof Kobielski, a Polish major who formed part of the group, told Polish TV the team had faced "real danger" in three instances. "When there was shooting we didn't speak, we just stayed lying on the floor," Kobielski told TVN24. "All around us there were hundreds of men armed with knives, pistols and automatic weapons."
The group of military observers, consisting of four Germans, a Dane, a Pole and a Czech, were detained in the town of Kramatorsk, south of rebel-held Slovyansk on 25 April.
A Swedish member of the team was released earlier because he was suffering from diabetes. The terms of the OSCE team's release remain unclear.
Ukraine vowed on Sunday to broaden its operation against pro-Russia rebels. Andriy Parubiy, the chief of the national security and defence council, told AFP that the armed forces would expand the "active stage of the operation in other towns where extremists and terrorists are carrying out illegal activities".
Two days of chaos and violence in east and south-east Ukraine appeared to be pushing the country ever closer to civil war over the weekend. On Saturday, an angry crowd confronted police outside the trades union building in Odessa, where dozens of pro-Russia activists died on Friday night in a blaze started during clashes with pro-Ukraine protesters.
