From an empty apartment overlooking the shattered remains of eastern Ukraine’s biggest airport, a fighter known as Givi is leading an all-out assault against the last remaining government outpost in the main pro-Russia stronghold.
The camouflage-clad guerrilla, a Russian tricolor on his arm, heads one of two units tasked with flushing out Ukrainian government soldiers from a site at the heart of the six-month war, which has already claimed 3,400 lives.
Despite a five-week truce, his “Somali battalion” has been aiming tanks and rockets at Prokofiev International Airport, inflicting daily losses and reducing the futuristic structure to piles of rubble and twisted steel.
Ukrainian soldiers have been confined to the airport’s vast bunkers and other underground areas, giving the rebels de facto control, Givi says. A thin man with sallow eyes and graying temples, Givi has turned into a star of recent battlefield dispatches.
He is a native of Abkhazia, which has similarly sought to break away from Georgia with Russian support. In one separatist video, he calmly chats over a cigarette as a shell sends debris scattering next to him and other fighters run for cover.
Above ground, short-range rockets fly. Some shells land meters from the building.
According to the militants, Ukrainian forces pound the city from outlying villages such as Peski, about 2km away.
“There are still soldiers underground, but we will make them leave one by one. Every day we do some mopping up,” he says. “The airport is under our control.”
Asked about the Sept. 5 ceasefire agreement separatist leaders signed with Kiev under Russian pressure, Givi smiles.
“If there is an attack from them [Ukrainian soldiers], nobody will stop us — neither the OSCE, nor anybody else,” he says in reference to the 80-member team from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that is monitoring truce compliance.
As has been the case throughout the uprising, Kiev gives a completely different ground report, saying that its troops have repelled the daily raids on the airport and maintained control.
Givi came to Donetsk with a group of separatist fighters, including a man named Motorola who leads another famed rebel unit, after they captured the eastern town of Ilovaysk in August. Ukraine has confirmed it lost at least 100 soldiers in that battle.
Analysts believe the loss of Ilovaysk was so devastating and surprising that it convinced Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to sue for peace and offer rebel-run parts of the east limited autonomy under the September ceasefire deal.
Givi is interested only in total victory, with every last government soldier forced out of the Russian-speaking east.
The rebels have taken over several upper floors of the building to give them a line of sight and fire on the airport. Miraculously, several apartments are still occupied by their old residents.
On the fifth floor is the command center used by Givi, who issues orders juggling a phone and a walkie-talkie while stepping over romance novels, tea boxes and other remnants of civilians’ previous lives.
“We do not attack anyone; we merely respond to the fire,” he says. “We do this for the people who live around the airport so that they do not suffer Ukrainian shelling.”
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