Kiev says Russia gave tanks to rebels

Source: AP | June 15, 2014, Sunday |

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PRO-RUSSIA separatists shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane yesterday, killing all 49 crew and troops aboard in a bloody escalation of the conflict in the country’s restive east.

It was a bitter setback for the Ukrainian forces, which have struggled to suppress an armed insurgency by foes of the new government. And it came just a week after Ukraine’s new president, billionaire candy magnate Petro Poroshenko, spoke about a peace plan in his inaugural address.

But the deadliest single incident in the four-month-old conflict suggested the two sides were still far apart in their demands and talk of de-escalating the conflict remained premature.

The loss of the plane “will refocus attention on the fact that Russia does not seem to be doing very much to moderate the insurgency (or) the cross-border resupply of separatists,” said Timothy Ash, an analyst at Standard Bank Plc.

Nine crew and 40 troops were aboard the Il-76, a Russian-built heavy transport plane, when it went down as it approached the airport at Luhansk, the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office said.

Luhansk is close to the Russian border, an area where separatists have seized government buildings and declared independence after holding disputed referendums. Ukrainian forces still control the airport, however.

Defense Ministry spokesman Bohdan Senyk said rebels used anti-aircraft guns and a heavy machine gun to down the plane, while the prosecutor general’s office mentioned an anti-aircraft missile.

Several pieces of wreckage lay in a field near Novohannivka, 20 kilometers south of Luhansk. An AP reporter saw about a dozen armed separatists inspecting the site.

The death toll surpassed the 46 people killed in a blaze and shootings in Odessa on May 2, and the 12 troops who died on May 29 when rebels shot down a helicopter near Slovyansk.

Kiev has accused Russia of letting three tanks cross the border into Ukraine, where they were used by rebels.

Russia denied supplying the separatists.

In Washington, the US State Department said Russia had stockpiled both tanks and weapons for the separatists at a depot in southwest Russia.

The rebels acquired weapons and gear from Russia, spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

“Russia will claim the tanks were taken from Ukrainian forces, but ... we are confident the tanks came from Russia.”

NATO said it had images that showed recent Russian tank movements near the border.

The tanks’ markings are not the same as those used by the Ukrainian military, it said.

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