Russia has asked military attaches from 18 countries including the US to visit a town in the Rostov region yesterday where Moscow says a shell fired from across the border in Ukraine killed one Russian citizen.
The planned visit appeared part of a war of words between Ukraine and Russia intended to win international backing in the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists who have risen up in eastern Ukraine.
“The defense ministry of the Russian Federation has decided to familiarize foreign military specialists with the real situation in Donetsk in the Rostov region ... which [on Sunday] suffered destruction from artillery fire and shelling from Ukrainian territory,” a ministry spokesman said.
Photo: AFP
Itar-Tass news agency quoted a defense official as saying military attaches from the other permanent members of the UN Security Council — France, Britain and China — were also invited.
Ukraine has denied the Russian charges that Ukrainian government forces fired across the border. It says the separatist rebels systematically fire across the border into Russia to try to provoke Russian military intervention.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned that Kiev risked “irreversible consequences” and a report in the Kommersant daily cited a source close to the Kremlin as saying Russia was weighing “targeted retaliatory strikes” against Ukrainian positions.
Moscow’s angry response to the incident and reports of Russian troops being moved up to the border raised again the prospect of Russian intervention, after weeks in which Russian President Vladimir Putin had appeared intent on disengaging.
In another incident likely to stoke the already high tensions, Ukrainian villagers on the Russian border reported that a Ukrainian airforce plane was shot down on Monday.
In a field near the Russian border in the separatist stronghold of Lugansk, what was left of an AN-26 military transport plane lay scattered in pieces.
The plane was hit by a missile and crashed shortly after noon, according to residents from the nearby village of Davydo-Mykilske.
The Ukrainian government said the shot likely came “from the territory of the Russian Federation.”
“It made a U-turn near the border and then it was hit, caught fire and fell to the ground,” local resident Sergei told a team of reporters, as he surveyed the debris of the plane.
Residents say that some of the crew were able to parachute from the plane before it crashed, but they did not know where they landed. They spoke of seeing three parachutes in the sky.
A Ukrainian government spokesperson said there were eight people aboard the plane, which was capable of carrying 40.
Following the crash, both the Ukrainian army and separatist forces sent teams looking for the surviving crew members.
Ukrainian defense officials said they had made contact with at least two of those who had been on board, while rebels reportedly claimed they were holding four for interrogations.
The wreckage of the plane is split into two main pieces — the tail of the aircraft bearing a Ukrainian coat of arms, and 200m away, a wing with a piece of engine and a propellor attached. Bottles of water are scattered everywhere, indicating that the plane might have been carrying supplies.
Ukrainian authorities on Monday afternoon said that the transport aircraft had been flying too high to be hit by portable missile systems used by the rebels, meaning the shots had come “likely from the territory of the Russian Federation.”
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