The commander of the Ukrainian "Donbass" battalion, Semen Semenchenko, announced on August 25 that 30 Russian tanks had been spotted, several of which had been destroyed. The tanks were allegedly going from the Russian border towards Novoazovsk (population 10.000) on the coast of the Sea of Azov, about 15 kilometers from the border.
The Russian media then reported that there was chaos called "The Russians are coming!" in Mariupol (450.000 inhabitants) on the coast of the Sea of Azov, in which in May, Ukrainian forces with the use of heavy weapons set fire to the police headquarters, in which some of the police officers loyal to the rebels were killed. , and took control of the city.
Russian reports say that upon news of the approach of the rebel forces, people in Mariupol bought salt and the most basic necessities, that there were kilometers long queues at the gas stations, that the roads to the east towards Berdjansk were blocked, and that a large number of people were asking for tickets at the railway station for Berdyansk, Lviv and Kyiv.
There are also rumors that Igor Streljkov, mythologized in the east of Ukraine and satanized in the west, is coming to Mariupol, who mysteriously disappeared from public view after he was dismissed from the post of Minister of Defense of Novorossiya, just as several other insurgent leaders who have Russian citizenship left their positions and gave way to local rebel leaders. Some concluded from this that this change at the top would reduce the radicalism of the self-proclaimed republics, although there were no signs of consent to the federalization of Ukraine.
In Moscow, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov declares that he has not heard anything about the transfer of Russian tanks to Ukrainian territory, that such claims from the Ukrainian side are not new and that the Ukrainian side should present the evidence it has. A day later, the Ukrainian security service announced that ten soldiers of the 60st Regiment of the 331th Svir Airborne Division were detained (not captured!) near the town of Zerkalnyi in the Amvrosiiv region, some 98 kilometers northeast of Novoazovsk, where a larger Ukrainian formation is allegedly surrounded. power of the Russian Federation.
The Russian military ministry then announced that Russian soldiers were patrolling in the border zone where shells often fall on the Russian side and that they crossed into Ukrainian territory probably by accident, on an unmarked part of the border. The ministry reminds that by mistake Ukrainian soldiers crossed the border with weapons and in vehicles, and that at one point a large group of about 400 soldiers crossed into Russian territory without weapons, fed by the Russians and returned home. The Russian media, of course, generously recorded the expressions of gratitude of the Ukrainian soldiers, while the Western ones ignored the story with a human face.
Established on August 24, 1991, when Ukraine declared independence from the USSR, the 2250 km long Russian-Ukrainian border is often a simple path that runs across fields or between suburban gardens.
At the beginning of the war, the current governor of Donetsk, Igor Taruta, otherwise a 2,5 billion dollar businessman, the owner of "Metalist", boasted that he and his brother ordered the digging of 100 kilometers of trenches along the border at their own expense, which should be used to defend against Russian aggression. At least 100 kilometers of the border are in the war zone or under the control of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, although there are also Ukrainian customs crews at some checkpoints, and there are also some OSCE observers.
BATTLE FOR SAUR MOGILE: The rebels, who two weeks ago were assumed to be on the verge of collapse, or at least on the verge of losing their main strongholds - Donetsk and Lugansk - now claim that their position has improved in recent days, that they have cut the wedges with which the Ukrainians had cut off Donetsk and severed the connection with the city Luhansk, that they defeated the Ukrainian forces near Ilovaisk, about twenty kilometers east of Donetsk, around which battles have been fought for days, and that the Ukrainian forces are between Donetsk and Lugansk was surrounded in several "cauldrons" - one south of Lugansk in the airport zone, and the other further south, along the Russian border, near the town of Andreyevka, where a large group of Ukrainian volunteer battalions "Shakhtyorsk", "Ajdar" and "Donbass" was allegedly surrounded again "...
They also claim that, having broken through the southern surroundings of Donetsk, they took control of a hill near the suburb of Jelenovka and that they opened a road to the south towards Novoazovsk, 80 kilometers away on the sea coast.
On the southern front - if in that chaotic war with mixed forces, "cauldrons" and "countercauldrons" one can speak of a front at all - along the Russian land border from the Sea of Azov towards Luhansk, the bloodiest battles were fought around the height of Saur Mogil, the former Cossack station and place historical battles of the Red Army with the Wehrmacht. From that 277,9-meter-high hill, you can control the steppe with a radius of 40 kilometers.
On August 26, the rebels claimed to have regained control of the strategically important peak that they abandoned on August 9, retreating in the face of overwhelming Ukrainian forces. Kiev says that Ukrainian forces still hold that strategic point.
By the way, judging by Russian sources, it could be concluded that the Russians will soon be in front of Washington, and according to Ukrainian sources, that the Ukrainians will be in Moscow tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow in front of Beijing.
In the fog of war, it is difficult to determine who is there at the end of August, but judging by the videos from social networks, it is clear that the 36-meter high monument made of reinforced concrete covered with granite on the top of that hill was first severely riddled, and then on August 21 it was demolished by artillery fire. Only the leg of the six-meter-tall bronze warrior facing east remained.
Rebel sources say that Novorossiya (consisting of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk Republics) has formed military formations (brigades, etc.) capable of larger operations. Two news from Russian sources talked about rebel partisan actions - about an attack on a motorized unit near Kharkiv and in the Zaporozhye region about an attack on a convoy near Gulyaipol, otherwise the birthplace of Batko Makhno, an anarchist commander from the era of the October Revolution who led bloody battles for some time.
WAR PARADE AND ELECTIONS: Official Kiev denied that Ukrainian forces were in the area and claimed that concentrated forces were sufficient to capture Luhansk. Donetsk has come under artillery fire and rocket attacks and a "wheel" ballistic missile, according to the rebels.
On August 24, the 23rd anniversary of independence was celebrated in Ukraine. Military parades were held in Kyiv and Odessa. Some have compared those morale-boosting parades to the October Revolution anniversary parade on Red Square in 1941, when the Germans were close to Moscow.
President Poroshenko dissolved the Supreme Council and announced another Ukrainian wartime election for October - this time a parliamentary one. On the domestic political terrain, he is certainly in a better position than the one in which Hetman Pavel Skoropadsky was before the entry of Simon Petliura into Kiev in November 1918. He must beware of the hawks and the Right Sector. Poroshenko promised to successfully end the "anti-terrorist operation" in the east by Ukraine's independence day on August 24, but the end of the war is not in sight. Units from the parade in Kiev and another brigade of the National Guard were sent straight to the front in Donbass. At the military parade in Kiev, he raised his voice and spoke about 2014 as the year of the Patriotic War and announced that in the coming years, he would invest about three billion dollars in strengthening the Ukrainian armed forces. In various media, news is circulating that Ukraine, which has had a lot of military equipment destroyed or captured by rebels in the east, is allegedly trying to buy some heavy weapons from Hungary and helicopters from Croatia (which bought those helicopters from Ukraine during the war), and that in return Croatia gets more modern aircraft from the Americans "with the help of bows".
In Donetsk, on the same day, which they call the day of independence of Ukraine from Donbass, they organized their parade where they displayed the captured or destroyed Ukrainian heavy weapons and the "March of the Spoils", the march of captured Ukrainians who were led by rebel soldiers with bayonets on their rifles through the "hot rabbit " women and older people who called them fascists. Behind the column of prisoners passed tanks that washed the streets with water, which is a direct quote from the march of prisoners in Moscow after the "Bagration" operation in Belarus in 1944. Then German prisoners were marched across the Red Square in parade order, and behind them sprinklers washed the sidewalks.
The Ukrainian side qualified the parade of prisoners as a violation of the Geneva Convention, which is the first indirect recognition that a war is being waged on Ukrainian territory. Until now, Kiev has insisted that it is exclusively conducting an anti-terrorist operation in the east of the country.
CONVOY AS "THE HUNTED DUTCHMAN": Before the parade, there was a drama with the Russian humanitarian convoy.
Early in the morning on August 12, 2014, a convoy of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Russian Federation left Naro-Fominsk, near Moscow, with 280 heavy trucks "Kamaz" with two thousand tons of humanitarian aid: 400 tons of flour, 100 tons of sugar, 62 tons of food for children, 54 tons of medical supplies and medicines, 12.000 sleeping bags and 69 electrical transformers...
Russian envoy to the UN Vitaly Churkin explained at a press conference in New York that on August 7, Russia informed the Secretary General of the Red Cross that it intended to send humanitarian aid to the residents of eastern Ukraine, that the organization's representatives approved the initiative, and that on August 12, Kiev confirmed the possibility of the humanitarian mission passing, and that on August 15, the first part of the truck was already at the Russian-Ukrainian border; that the procedure of transportation and control of the humanitarian shipment was carried out in accordance with the norms of international humanitarian law, and that some countries decided to create a political event out of an ordinary humanitarian convoy.
Until then, Kiev had refused all requests from the Russian side to send aid. When he finally agreed in principle, it turned out that the devil was in the details. The Ukrainian authorities demanded that there be no Russian escorts or military personnel, that the Russian "Kamazi" never cross the Ukrainian border, that the convoy come to the border crossing "Shebekino-Pletnevka" between Belogorodsk (RF) and Kharkiv Oblast (Ukraine), which is held by Kyiv , to load the aid into trucks that will be rented by the International Red Cross and determine which cities it will be distributed to.
The Kharkiv variant was dropped during complicated negotiations and the convoy headed south towards Voronezh, then towards the Kamen Shakhtinsky border crossing on the way to Luhansk, which is not controlled by the Ukrainian side. On August 20, the predecessor of the ICRC set out to reconnoitre the route towards Luhansk planned for the passage of the convoy, which passed southeast of Lugansk by the village of Novosvetlovska, where in the previous days there had been fighting between rebels and Ukrainian forces surrounded in a wider zone around the airport.
While the "Kamaz" were waiting in the field near the border, the Russians invited journalists and observers to observe the shipment. At the border itself, the Ukrainian customs officials began to inspect truck by truck and it took quite a long time with various delays. Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a conversation with Chancellor Angela Merkel that further detention of the humanitarian convoy has become intolerable.
TIME-OUT WITHOUT AGREEMENT: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko in Minsk;...
And in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs it was announced in very harsh words that the presentation of new artificial conditions and proposals has already become mockery and that similar chaos, open lies and irresponsibility (of the authorities of Ukraine) cannot be tolerated any longer, as well as that all proposals for delaying delivery help people in the area of humanitarian disaster exhausted.
The ICRC did not follow the convoy because it did not receive guarantees from Kiev for the safety of the transport. The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, said that the entry of the Russian humanitarian convoy into Ukraine without the control of Ukrainian customs officials and without the escort of ICRC officials is a violation of international law.
In Western capitals, they were angry, threatening sanctions against Russia. Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby stressed that Russia should call off the convoy.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the entry of the Russian convoy into Ukraine a violation of international obligations, which Russia accepted in Berlin and Geneva.
The UN Security Council has scheduled urgent consultations behind closed doors. Western countries condemned Russia, and South American countries and China supported it. Russian envoy Churkin noted that the "kingdom of crooked mirrors" ruled in the Security Council and criticized the fact that certain countries express concern about the delivery of humanitarian aid while refusing to see the humanitarian disaster on the ground.
…Russian humanitarian convoy
The first trucks from the Russian humanitarian convoy arrived in Luhansk on Friday, August 22 around noon, they delivered all the cargo during the day and returned to Russia on August 23. The Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations announced that it intends to continue cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, and on August 25, Sergei Lavrov informed Ukraine in a note about Russia's intention to send a new convoy.
MEETING IN MINSK: It is difficult to say whether the war in Ukraine, which flared up on the day of independence when it was supposed to end, has reached the culmination after which there could be at least a truce in the following days. Some false hopes were raised that this could be clarified in Minsk on Tuesday 26 August at the meeting of the Eurasian Customs Union, where Russian President Vladimir Putin, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev met with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
It is the first direct meeting between President Putin and Poroshenko after their brief meeting in June in France at the D-Day ceremony, which was attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. After that, Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine participated in quadruple negotiations, which did not produce results. German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Kiev before the meeting in Minsk, apparently offering some German compromise formula that the media baptized with different slogans: "Crimea for the Donbass", "Ukraine for the Trumpet"...
Although he kept a high tone of war at the parade, Poroshenko said before his arrival in Minsk that he plans to agree on a peaceful solution for Ukraine, to decide on peace in Europe in Minsk, and his press service announced that he is coming to Belarus with " three powerful representatives of the EU" to discuss peace. Before going to Minsk, Poroshenko tried to update his plan, which failed in June.
In Minsk, Putin spoke a little about the war in Ukraine (he said that there is no solution without dialogue). Moscow proposed an unconditional ceasefire, and from the context of its proposals it can be concluded that this means that Kiev should recognize the rebels as a party to the war, which Kiev did not agree to, promising a truce only if the "terrorists" unconditionally lay down their arms. Until now, the rebels have declared that they would agree to a truce only if independence negotiations begin. Putin and Poroshenko agreed to exchange prisoners of war.
There was more talk about trade in Minsk. Poroshenko said that it is difficult for Ukraine that the trade turnover with the countries of the Customs Union has decreased by 30 percent and that it would not be good to worsen the trade conditions. Putin came out tough, saying that Russia is not against the participation of other countries in various alliances, but not to its own detriment, that it will not discriminate against anyone, but that after Ukraine signs an agreement with the EU, the Russian economy will suffer damage of 100 billion rubles (about 30 billion dollars) and that because of this, Moscow will probably take protective measures, that is, it will cancel trade preferences and customs facilities for Ukrainian goods.
He warned Belarus because the re-export of Western goods, the import of which Russia has banned as part of the sanctions, goes through it.
The meeting in the Belarusian capital was attended by high-ranking officials of the European Commission, including the head of European diplomacy Catherine Ashton, but, more interestingly, the European Commissioner for Trade Karel de Gucht and the Commissioner for Energy Gunther Oettinger. The optimists expected the continuation of the Ukrainian-Russian negotiations on gas from those negotiations (the Ukrainian ministry declared that it would not interrupt the transport of Russian gas to Europe). The negotiations of the EU and the Customs Union lasted four hours, and then we moved on to the working dinner - where, as always, there are napkins on which you can draw anything.
It was also announced that a sufficiently long truce would be established during which a political solution would be found for Ukraine, which is sinking into the chaos of war. However, the host of the meeting in Minsk, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, declared on Tuesday a little after 3:00 p.m. that he does not expect colossal solutions to the Ukrainian crisis, that he should expect a major breakthrough towards peace, but conceptually.
The balance of the fighting so far: according to the latest UN records, 2249 dead (23 children) and 6033 wounded (38 children), 190.000 people in internal exile (until August 13 - 156.000), Ukrainian refugees in Russia - 207.000 (a week before - 188.000)...
Due to the destroyed railway infrastructure in Donbass, coal for the Ukrainian power system may disappear in 40 days. The hryvnia exchange rate fell to a historic low.
Will that war stop or flare up when Santa Claus appears as a peacemaker?
