(Newsweek) --- Pro-Russian
separatists have been put on “full alert” for a major offensive that Ukrainian and U.S. military officials
anticipate will happen in the next two months, a Ukrainian military spokesman
said in Kiev , Ukraine , Wednesday.
A truck belonging to the separatist self-proclaimed
partially destroyed bridge in the town of
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Ukrainian military
officials and front-line troops say the attack will begin sometime from
Orthodox Easter on April 12 to May 9, the 70th anniversary of the end of World
War II in Europe .
“According to
intelligence reports, the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic have put
their troops on full alert, calling on the militants to return back from health
treatment in Crimea, and Russia, as well as in other places,” Ukrainian
military spokesman Colonel Andriy Lysenko said to reporters Wednesday.
“The enemy is actively spreading rumours about
the beginning of active military actions and an attack on the territories
controlled by the Ukrainian government, and is trying to accuse the Ukrainian
armed forces in advance of disrupting the cease-fire,” he added.
Lysenko also said that two Ukrainian soldiers had been
killed by separatist fire in the previous 24 hours.
Former NATO Supreme
Allied Commander General Wesley Clark echoed Lysenko’s analysis in earlier
statements made following a trip to Ukraine in March. “Ukrainian forces
expect attack within the next 60 days,” Clark said at a March 30 briefing with
the Atlantic Council in Washington .
“This assessment is based on geographic imperatives, the ongoing pattern of
Russian activity, and an analysis of Russian actions, statements, and Putin’s
psychology to date,” he added.
Ukrainian media and
military officials have reported a surge in Russian tanks, weapons and
personnel streaming into Ukrainian territory. Andriy Parubiy, first deputy
chairman of Ukraine ’s
parliament, said March 28 that Russia
had amassed 60,000 troops on the Ukraine border.
In previous
statements, Moscow
has denied militarily supporting the separatists. The Russian Ministry of
Foreign Affairs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The February 12
cease-fire deal, which was hammered out after 17 hours of tense negotiations
between the leaders of Russia ,
Ukraine , France and Germany
in the Belarusian capital of Minsk ,
has reduced the intensity of the conflict. But fighting has continued daily.
More than 100
Ukrainian military personnel have been killed in separatist attacks since the
cease-fire went into effect, according to Kyiv. The actual number may be much
higher, military officials admit, due to losses from a separatist siege on the
town of Debaltseve
in the days immediately after the cease-fire, which sent hundreds of Ukrainian
troops into a chaotic retreat.
The Ukrainian
National Guard Azov regiment, which has about 1,000 personnel, has reported
more than 40 wounded personnel since the cease-fire began. Overall, the
conflict has killed more than 6,000 people and displaced more than one million
from their homes, according to the United Nations.
While international
monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)
say the cease-fire is largely holding, despite repeated violations, Ukrainian
military officials are making preparations for what many soldiers refer to as
the next “active phase” of the conflict.
Across Ukraine ,
defensive fortifications are being built with an early May deadline. In
Mariupol, a southern port city on the Sea of Azov ,
a network of trenches is being dug along the city’s beaches to defend against
an amphibious attack. And 31 machine gun pillboxes are being constructed in the
region around Kharkhiv , Ukraine ’s second largest city.
In total, according
to Ukrainian officials, more than 300 defensive fortifications are being built
along the contact line with separatist troops in eastern Ukraine .
“We have very
limited time for this work—we must build all fortifications until mid-May,”
Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Gennadiy Zubko said March 19, according to the
Ukrainian news agency Unian.
“The situation is
tense, and we must combine not just the efforts of the military and regional
administrations, but the efforts of all Ukrainian citizens to address the
problem,” he added.
Across the conflict
areas, fighting has gone on almost non-stop since the truce was signed in
February. The overall intensity of the conflict has diminished, but fighting
has remained heavy at certain hotspots, such as outside the separatist
stronghold of Donetsk
and the government-held city Mariupol.
On the outskirts of
Mariupol separatists and Ukrainian forces have been skirmishing for more than
seven months. The nearby town of Shyrokyne
has been nearly destroyed by heavy weapons banned under the cease-fire’s terms.
“Not one building
had been untouched by the many weeks of shelling,” Chief Monitor of the OSCE
Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine
Ambassador Ertugrul Apakan said March 27, referring to damage in Shyrokyne,
according to an OSCE statement.
The United States recently announced it was sending
paratroopers from the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade based in Vicenza , Italy
to train the Ukrainian National Guard. The training will be conducted in the
western Ukrainian town of Yavoriv ,
more than 800 miles from the conflict areas. The U.S.
soldiers are expected to arrive in Ukraine at the end of April.
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