Bent in a semi-crouch Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Denys Monastyrsky ran back from an exposed frontline position, as mortar shells crashed in the fields around him.
Just minutes earlier, Monastyrsky had told reporters: “We are ready for any scenario at any time.”
On Saturday, the scenario was a surprise mortar barrage after he met troops and inspected trenches and bunkers outside Novoluganske, in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
The message for accompanying journalists was that Moscow-backed forces are stepping up attacks along the eight-year-old front line, amid the growing menace of a full-scale Russian invasion.
Yet the threat was obvious. As the minister, dressed in camouflage fatigues and a military helmet, walked back up an exposed road lined with abandoned vehicles, shells whistled through the air and exploded in nearby fields. Monastyrsky, his escorts and reporters scrambled for cover before running back up the road to their vehicles.
No one was hurt, and the official would later say that he thought the army, not he, was the target.
However, the incident underlined the danger of escalation in a conflict that has already left 14,000 dead and could now, if US intelligence is to be believed, become an international war.
The separatist rebels across the front line from the position visited by Monastyrsky accuse Kiev of plotting an offensive to recapture the enclave they hold in parts of Donetsk and Lugansk.
However, it is Ukraine that says it is under attack — two soldiers were killed on Saturday — and US President Joe Biden says intelligence indicates that Russia plans to invade.
One of the dead soldiers, 35-year-old Captain Anton Sidorov, a father of three, was shot near Novoluganske, where the minister’s shelling incident occurred.
If the more than 150,000 Russian soldiers Kiev and Washington say are massed on the border do launch an assault, they would have to pass through frontline communities such as Novoluganske. Andriy, a 26-year-old infantry soldier from the city of Kharkiv who is based here, said that the situation is “heating up.”
“The situation is even worse than yesterday, they’ve been firing 152mm heavy artillery,” he said. “There are wounded in several battalions.”
There were 4,000 people in the town before the conflict erupted, isolated by potholed roads and now by minefields marked by little painted red posts.
Only 3km from the rebel front line, the town lives in a sort of no-man’s land and many of the homes have been abandoned.
“We’re not afraid,” said 10-year-old Ruslan, wandering with his German Shepherd and a few friends between the ruined city stadium and the Ukrainian army command post.
Elena Valerievna, the 50-year-old owner of a small grocers store, is less afraid to admit that recent days have been a trial.
“It’s been a long time since there was such a bombardment,” she said. “I wish there was peace, calm, tranquility. That’s what I want, not war, but I fear that’s impossible.”
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