Ukraine Threatens Rebels With ‘Nasty Surprise’ in New Push

Ukraine’s government kept up military pressure against pro-Russian rebels on Tuesday, threatening them with a “nasty surprise,” while the rebels said they were preparing to fight back after losing their main stronghold.

President Petro Poroshenko, drawing confidence from the fall of the rebel bastion of Slaviansk at the weekend, named a new chief of military operations in the east following his appointment of an aggressive new defence minister who again demanded the separatists lay down their arms.

A security official said the government’s plan to clear rebels from the two big towns of Donetsk and Luhansk would come as an “nasty surprise” for the insurgents.

But Poroshenko — whose officials have ruled out any more unilateral ceasefires — kept the door open to a further round of indirect peace talks with separatist leaders, naming a possible venue in a government-controlled monastery town in the east.

Poroshenko on Tuesday visited Slaviansk, which lies in eastern Ukraine’s industrialized Donbass region.

“Until today Slaviansk was a symbol of terror and violence. Today Slaviansk is a symbol of a free Donbass and I thank you for that,” he said on the city’s main square in front of what was one of the rebels’ main headquarters.

Meanwhile, signs emerged of a split in separatist ranks over the fall of Slaviansk with a powerful field commander critically questioning the pull-out from the rebel stronghold.

The rebels’ loss of Slaviansk marks a major breakthrough in Kiev’s three-month long fight against Russian-backed separatists who are now calling in vain for military help from Moscow.

One rebel leader played down its loss as a military expedient and said the hundreds of fighters who were able to move from the town to the regional capital Donetsk were preparing a command structure to defend that city and hit back.

“We’re not preparing ourselves for a siege. We are preparing ourselves for action,” Alexander Borodai, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, told a Russian online newspaper during a visit to the Russian capital.

Sporadic shooting was heard from parts of Donetsk overnight. In Luhansk, a city on the border with Russia where rebels also control key buildings, two people in a minibus were killed by a shell that exploded nearby, a municipal official said.

Focus On Donetsk

Pro-Russian rebels have been fighting government forces since April when they set up separatist republics in the Russian-speaking east after political upheaval in Kiev led to the ousting of a Moscow-backed president followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

They have brought down military helicopters and ambushed government forces on the ground in three months of fighting in which more than 200 Ukrainian troops have been killed, along with hundreds of civilians and rebels.

The fall of Slaviansk to government forces at the weekend has now swung the focus onto Donetsk, raising the question of how the Kiev military will go about breaking the resistance in a sprawling industrial city with a population of over 900,000.

Security officials in Kiev gave away nothing about their military plans. But a spokesman for the “anti-terrorist operation,” Andriy Lysenko, said: “There is a plan … under which we will be able to liberate these towns (Donetsk and Luhansk).

“We are not publicizing details of this plan. It should be a nasty surprise for the terrorists,” he told journalists.

At a meeting on Monday with Poroshenko, Donetsk mayor Olexander Lukyanchenko urged him not use air strikes or heavy artillery to crush the rebels. Ukraine’s richest man, coal-and-steel magnate Rinat Akhmetov, made a similar appeal on Monday.

“We have a population in the town now of more than 900,000 people minus those who have left. It’s impossible to evacuate them and there is nowhere for them to go. Their security must be guaranteed via negotiations at all levels,” said Lukyanchenko.

This article appeared in print on page 10 of the July 9th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.