| A man rides past a Ukrainian BTR-3 or BTR-4 in Mariupol. Photo: Reuters/Vasily Fedosenko |
The Ukrainian government and Pro-Russian separatists both
accuse each other of breaking a new ceasefire. Despite ambiguous
announcements over the last few days, a ceasefire the Ukrainian government
and pro-Russian separatists agreed to in Minsk yesterday has mostly held. A lasting
peace deal was hoped to be just around the corner – but that won’t happen if the
ceasefire collapses. So far, at least 2,600 people have been killed in the
fighting, not including the 298 passengers and crew of Malaysia Airlines flight
MH17. Over a million people have been displaced.
A prisoner exchange was planned for later today.
The Situation on the Ground
The Ukrainian military sabotaged the airstrip of Luhansk
Airpot before separatist forces – including Russian troops, according to
Ukrainian representatives – recaptured it. Dontesk Airport was still contested
when the ceasefire took effect; it’s unclear who controls it. Both airports
were focal points of the recent fighting. The separatists themselves probably
do not have the resources to repair the airstrip in Luhansk – and without any functioning
aircraft of their own, they have little reason to.
Mariupol remains in Ukrainian hands, despite a direct
armored attack on it in the hours before the ceasefire. The attack was
supported by heavy artillery fire, including multiple
rocket launchers. Shortly before the attack, the Russian ambassador to the OSCE
predicted that pro-Russian separatists would “liberate” the city, noting that
the civilian population of the region “are ethnic Russians, though they have
Ukrainian passports.”
It’s unlikely that the offensive towards Mariupol would have
actually succeeded in creating a land route to Crimea. The offensive was
probably either an attempt to give the separatists access to the sea and expand
the territory under their control, or a feint to draw Ukrainian forces away
from Donetsk and Luhansk.
The Ukrainian military was on the verge of recapturing both
Donetsk and Luhansk when what appears to be an overt intervention by the
Russian military swept into the country. Evidence of this is now overwhelming.
Ukraine has captured
Russian soldiers. Others have been killed.
One Russian unit has even been decorated for some unknown reason. Photographs –
including satellite photographs – abound.
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| A T-72B3 claimed to have been captured by Ukrainian forces near Ilovaisk on August 28. |
A Note on Tanks
Ukrainian representatives describe “Russian tank battalions”
as leading the recent separatist offensives. The existence of concentrated
armored units (a full-strength Russian armored battalion has 30 tanks) is
unprecedented in the conflict.
In the first few months of the fighting, tanks in separatist
hands were few and far between, generally being seen at most three at a time.
The separatists even used World War 2-era tanks from war monuments to
supplement their sparse arsenal. In recent months the number of tanks being
used by the separatists has swelled to hundreds – far more than have been
captured from the Ukrainian military. Either the tanks are from Russia, or the
separatists suddenly developed the capability to produce them to modern Russian
standards extremely rapidly.
Observers have identified the T-72B3 in photos of tanks
recently captured by the Ukrainian military. The Russian military began
acquiring T-72B3s, one of the newest Russian models of T-72, last year. The T-72
is a Soviet-designed tank that is still in widespread use. One photographs
shows a T-72B3 with the white stripes the Ukrainian military has used to
indicate not being separatist – suggesting a possible attempted “ruse of war”
to sneak past Ukrainian positions. Variants of the T-72B3 were also used in a
recent “tank biathlon”.
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