SLAVIANSK: Ukraine’s government said on Sunday it was sending security forces into the eastern city of Slaviansk where pro-Russian militants have seized control in what Kiev describes as an act of aggression by the Kremlin.
Any operation to dislodge the armed militants risks tipping the stand-off into a new, dangerous phase because Moscow has warned it will act to protect eastern Ukraine’s Russian-speakers if they come under attack.
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said security units from across the country had been brought in to launch an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ to re-assert Kiev’s control in Slaviansk.
A Reuters reporter in the city, about 150 km from the Ukraine-Russia border, said two military helicopters were flying over the town’s police headquarters where militants were holed up.
“Pass this on to all civilians: they should leave the centre of town, not come out of their apartments, and not go near the windows,” Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.
In the nearby town of Kramatorsk, militants exchanged gunfire with police late on Saturday, though there was no confirmation any one had been hurt.
Novosti Donbass, a local Internet news site, said that government forces had taken down two rebel barricades at entry points into Slaviansk, but there was no independent confirmation of this.
Residents in the town did not appear to have heeded the appeal by Avakov and families were out on the streets on their normal Sunday business.
Relations between Russia and the West are at their most fraught since the end of the Cold War, the result of a row over Ukraine that began when the Moscow-backed president was pushed out, and Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
In Washington, the White House expressed concern that the seizures of public buildings in eastern Ukraine could be a prelude to a Russian military incursion, though Moscow has strenuously denied any such intention.
“We call on President (Vladimir) Putin and his government to cease all efforts to destabilize Ukraine, and we caution against further military intervention,” said Laura Lucas Magnuson, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.
US Vice President Joe Biden will travel to Kiev on April 22, becoming the most senior US official to visit the country since the crisis began there. (Reuters)