Embattled Town Falls to Ukraine Rebels

Government soldiers pulled out of a ferociously contested railway hub in eastern Ukraine Wednesday, ending a siege so intense the retreating troops said they couldn’t get water or food amid relentless shelling by Russian-backed separatists. At least six soldiers were killed in the withdrawal and more than 100 wounded.

President Petro Poroshenko sought to portray the fall of Debaltseve in a positive light, saying the pullback was carried out “in a planned and organized manner,” despite assertions by exhausted and dirt-caked soldiers, some of whom made their way out on foot, that their forces suffered heavy losses.

No matter the circumstances, the retreat appeared to be an acceptance by the Ukrainian leader of a humiliating defeat in exchange for a chance at pushing a shaky truce agreement forward and securing the pullback of heavy weapons.

The loss of Debaltseve was a serious setback for the army. The town is a strategic railroad junction that lies on the most direct route between the separatist east’s two major cities, Donetsk and Luhansk. By taking control of it, rebels gain significant transportation connections to boost their regions’ capacity to function as a unified entity.

Its strategic importance kept the battle raging even after a cease-fire between Ukrainian forces and the Russia-backed rebels went into effect Sunday and appeared to be mostly holding elsewhere after fighting that has killed more than 5,600 people since April.

Relinquishing the town could remove the major impediment to a lasting cease-fire and begin the next step that was agreed to in a peace deal last week — the pullback of heavy weapons by both sides to create a buffer zone at least 30 miles wide.

But the images of traumatized soldiers and their stories of deprivation will be another wound to a national psyche already bruised by Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula last March and the vicious fighting in the east, where Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses at the hands of rebels they and the West claim got a huge boost from Russian equipment and troops.

Associated Press journalists were blocked from access to Debaltseve, making it impossible to independently assess circumstances there.

This article appeared in print on page 1 of the February 19th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.