KIEV (Reuters) – Pro-Russian rebels launched an offensive against the strategic port of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine yesterday, prompting the European Union’s foreign policy chief to warn of a further “grave deterioration” in EU-Russian relations.
Mariupol’s city administration said the rebels had killed at least 30 people and injured 83 others by firing rockets from long-range GRAD missile systems.
The city of 500,000, on the Sea of Azov, is vital for eastern Ukraine’s steel and grain exports and straddles the coastal route from the Russian border to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula in southern Ukraine seized by Russia last March.
President Petro Poroshenko, pledging to protect Ukrainian territory, said he would convene an emergency meeting of his country’s security council today.
“Today an offensive was launched on Mariupol. This will be the best possible monument to all our dead,” Russia’s RIA news agency quoted rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko as saying at a memorial ceremony in the separatist-held city of Donetsk.
Zakharchenko said the separatists also planned to encircle Debaltseve, a town northeast of Donetsk, in the next few days, Interfax news agency quoted him as saying.
Eastern Ukraine has seen an escalation of fighting in recent days that Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed on Kiev.
The rebels have ruled out more peace talks.
Poroshenko responded angrily to the fighting in Mariupol, a city the rebels tried to capture last autumn before a fragile ceasefire was agreed in eastern Ukraine. Kiev fears the rebels want to build a land bridge from Russia to Crimea.
