Ukraine seals off roads to Donbas as fighting intensifies

“Honestly speaking I’m tired of all these
negotiations,” the leader of the self-proclaimed
Donetsk People’s Republic Oleksandr Zakharchenko said.

“People who don’t keep their words…well, I don’t know. We
are ready for any talks. But in case it would be impossible to solve the
conflict peacefully, we are ready to fight.” 

Zakharchenko went on to claim his
Kremlin-backed fighters had killed and wounded some 200 Ukrainian soldiers in
the past 24 hours.

Andriy Lysenko,
spokesman for the Anti-Terrorist Operation headquarters, said pro-Russian fighters
had attacked the Ukrainian held terminal of Donetsk airport, 15 km outside the
city, which remains the insurgents’ largest stronghold.

According to Lysenko, pro-Kremlin
separatists opened fire on Ukrainian force positions more than 63 times on Jan.
11. He said that the Debaltseve-Artemivsk, Horlivka-Artemivsk,
Donetsk-Kurakhove and Donetsk-Mariupol roads had been sealed off.

“After the attack,
however, the Ukrainian army holds the line and the airport is currently under
control of the Ukrainian forces,” Lysenko told at the news conference on Jan. 12.

The Ukrainian army
reported no casualties within the last 24 hours, but said two soldiers were
wounded in the fighting.

According to a Kyiv
Post source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, massed rocket and mortar fire
can be heard echoing across Donetsk, with shelling particularly focused on
Kyivsky and Petrovsky districts and the areas surrounding the airport.

“I was in Petrovsky
district yesterday afternoon (on Jan. 11) and the shells were coming down a
kilometer away from us,” he said. “There are rumors that the Ukrainian army may
try to take the city soon, but it’s totally unconfirmed.”

Donetsk residents’
fears are being stoked by Russian leaders, who claim Ukraine is planning to
escalate the conflict.

Russian Foreign
Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Jan. 12 that Russia had information the
Ukrainian military is preparing another plan to solve the conflict in the
southeast of the country with the force.

“There is
information, very alarming information, that we are now double-checking, that
security forces are preparing another stage of the military solution to the
problem in the foreseeable future. This would be a disaster,” Lavrov told
a Moscow press conference.

Russian lawmaker Aleksei Pushkov, who
heads the foreign affairs committee at Russia’s lower house of parliament, said that throughout Sunday, Jan. 11 “Ukraine was bombing Donbas in a most ‘civilized’
manner: 5 were killed, including two children,” according to his Twitter
post.

His remarks
contradicted a report by the Russian-backed Donetsk city council however, which
reports one civilian was killed and nine wounded since Jan. 9.

The leaders of Donetsk
People’s Republic earlier said that Ukrainian government forces had pounded the Donetsk suburbs with artillery about 30 times since Jan. 11.

On Jan. 12 Serhiy Pashynsky,
who heads the parliamentary committee on national security and defense, said he
had received reports claiming that more and more pro-Russian troops are
appearing in the region.  

“The situation in the
anti-terrorist zone has worsened recently,” Pashynsky said in Kyiv on Jan. 12.
“We have the information that the terrorist groups and Russian (army) exceeded
the size of Ukrainian military. It happened for the first time.”

His remarks coincided
with a number of videos being posted on social media showing recently arrived Muslim
fighters from Chechnya and other regions of the North Caucasus in the centre of
Donetsk.

The United Nations estimates that more than 4,808 people have been
killed in the country’s war zone since April, while 610,413 have been internally displaced.

Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at goncharova@kyivpost.com