Separatists battling government troops in eastern Ukraine plan a general mobilization and aim to boost their fighting force to 100,000, one of their main leaders said yesterday.
Leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) Alexander Zakharchenko was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the mobilization would take place next week.
“A general mobilization is planned in the DNR in 10 days. Ten thousand men will be called up,” RIA news agency quoted Zakharchenko as saying in the city of Donetsk, though he did not make clear how the mobilization would be enforced.
“The joint army of the DNR and the [Luhansk People’s Republic] LNR will be 100,000 men strong,” Interfax news agency quoted him as saying. “Mobilization is the first stage; there will be volunteers first and we will see what to do next.”
Zakharchenko — elected in a vote that was not recognized by Kiev or the West, did not say how many separatists were currently fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Fighting has increased in eastern Ukraine in the past few weeks and hopes of easing the situation faded after talks on Saturday between Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe collapsed.
Representatives of the two self-proclaimed republics sought a revision of peace accords and were “not even prepared to discuss” a ceasefire, the organization said.
However, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for a truce on Sunday in a telephone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, according to a statement on the Ukrainian leader’s Web site.
Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko said that the separatists should be encouraged not to block talks and Russia must use its influence on the rebels to this end, according to an e-mailed statement from German government spokesman Steffen Seibert.
Meanwhile, five soldiers were killed and 29 wounded in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov told reporters in Kiev yesterday. Rebel forces attacked Ukrainian troops 104 times during that period, he said.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
CLOSELY TRACKED: A US officer said that the warplanes were watched as they flew from Russia by way of Iran and Syria to Libya and were photographed multiple times The US Africa Command flatly rejected Russian claims that Moscow did not deploy fighter jets to Libya, saying on Friday that the 14 aircraft flown in reflect Russia’s long-term goal to establish a foothold in the region that could threaten NATO allies. US Brigadier General Gregory Hadfield, deputy director of intelligence, said that the US tracked the MiG-29s and Su-24 fighter bombers flown in by Russian military, passing through Iran and Syria before landing at Libya’s al-Jufra air base. The base is the main forward airfield for Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar and his self-styled Libyan National Army, which has been waging an
‘SACRIFICED’: Hu Weifeng became the sixth doctor to die from COVID-19 at Wuhan Central Hospital, where calls to raise the alarm over the virus were suppressed The death of a Chinese doctor at Wuhan’s “whistle-blower hospital” has prompted a wave of anger at hospital authorities for not protecting front-line health workers in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak. Hu Weifeng (胡衛鋒), 42, a urologist at Wuhan Central Hospital where the whistle-blower ophthalmologist Li Wenliang (李文亮) worked, died of the virus on Tuesday after a four-month battle. Hu is the sixth doctor from his hospital killed by the virus. Another doctor who spoke out, Ai Fen (艾芬), said that authorities told hospital staff not to wear protective gear so as not to cause panic and reprimanded her for “harming
Singapore’s otters, long adored by the city-state’s nature lovers, are popping up in unexpected places during the COVID-19 lockdown, but their antics have angered some and even sparked calls for a cull. With the streets empty, the creatures have been spotted hanging out by a shopping center, scampering through the lobby of a hospital and even feasting on pricey fish stolen from a pond. While many think of tiny Singapore as a densely populated concrete jungle, it is also relatively green for a busy Asian city, and has patches of rainforest, fairly clean waterways and abundant wildlife. There are estimated to be about
‘LEAST WE CAN DO’: The gesture was made famous by former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was protesting police brutality that targeted minorities They are images that surprised and moved Americans: police officers taking a knee alongside protesters in the most widespread civil unrest to rock the US in decades — and in doing so embracing an anti-racism gesture denounced by US President Donald Trump. As Trump pushes for a crackdown on often-violent protests over the death of George Floyd, police officers from New York to Los Angeles to Houston, Texas, are making gestures of solidarity with demonstrators incensed at the latest case of an unarmed black man dying while in police custody. “I took off the helmet and laid the batons down. Where do
RSS