Russia lambasts Ukraine over move on rebels at Donetsk airport

Fears grow over further escalation as separatists appeal for international help

The Kremlin has accused Ukraine of rejecting its efforts to broker peace with the country’s separatist rebels, who last night appealed for international help as Kiev’s forces reclaimed territory around Donetsk’s ruined airport.

The escalation in fighting and losses suffered by the militants are stoking fears that Russian troops may intervene on a larger scale to help the rebels, as Kiev and the West say they have done in the past.

At least four civilians, including two children, were killed by artillery fire over the weekend, and in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities yesterday thousands marched in memory of 13 people killed when a shell struck a bus last week.

The military and the rebels blame each other for civilian deaths in a conflict that has taken more than 4,800 lives and displaced about one million people.

Ukraine’s military said yesterday at lunchtime that four servicemen had been killed and 32 wounded in the previous 24 hours, and claimed to have retaken control of Donetsk airport, which has assumed great symbolic value during months of fierce fighting.

Military spokesman Andriy Lysenko insisted the airport was considered government-controlled territory in a ceasefire deal agreed in September in Minsk, and so Ukraine’s forces were not breaching its terms by taking the area back.

Russia’s foreign ministry claimed the Minsk pact envisaged the airport being under rebel control, however, and accused Ukraine of launching “a full-scale military operation to recapture this strategic site, so as to continue attacks on residential areas of Donetsk”.

The ministry also accused Kiev of using the so-called ceasefire to reposition forces and of seeking “further escalation of the conflict with the aim of ‘resolving’ it by military means”.

 The statement carried some of Moscow’s strongest recent criticism of Kiev, and came alongside a Kremlin claim that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko had rejected peace efforts from Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.