Kiev: Ukraine’s interior minister on Friday said that federal forces had inflicted “high casualties” on separatist rebels led by a Chechen commander in the southeastern port of Mariupol. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the “active phase” of the offensive began at dawn and was still raging three hours later.
He said that two Ukrainian soldiers from the part- volunteer National Guard force were wounded in the fighting.
“The terrorists from the Donetsk People’s Republic are being headed by a criminal boss known as ‘The Chechen,'” Avakov wrote in a Facebook post.
He said the National Guard unit had destroyed a combat patrol vehicle and several rebel sniper positions.
“The area where the operation is being conducted in central Mariupol has been sealed off,” he wrote.
Rebels who seized about a dozen towns and cities in the industrial region of Donetsk and the neighbouring province of Lugansk in early April have proclaimed independence from Kiev and are seeking to join Kremlin rule.
Well-equipped gunmen from Chechnya – a Muslim Russian republic that fought two post-Soviet wars for independence before falling under Kremlin control – have appeared in growing numbers among the separatists.
Kiev’s new leaders and its Western allies accuse the Russian authorities of fomenting the fighting and turning a blind eye to the flow of gunmen and equipment across the border and into eastern Ukraine. (AFP)
