SLAVIANSK-
Ukrainian forces attacked the rebel-held city of Slaviansk before dawn on Friday and pro-Russia separatists shot down at least one attack helicopter, killing a pilot, in a sharp escalation of the conflict.
Describing the use of anti-aircraft missiles as proof of the presence of Russian special forces in the town that has become the military stronghold of the pro-Moscow movement, Ukrainian officials said Slaviansk was “tightly surrounded” and called on separatist leaders to release hostages and surrender.
Journalists of a foreign wire agency in the city of 130,000 heard shooting from shortly after 4 a.m. (9 p.m. EDT Thursday) and saw a military helicopter open fire. Ukrainian troops could be in seen in armored personnel carriers in a southern suburb.
The SBU security service said one military Mi-24 helicopter gunship had been shot down, killing one airman while a second had been taken prisoner by the rebels.
It said a second Mi-24, which normally would have a crew of two, was flying in tandem and had to make a forced landing. A third helicopter, carrying medics, was hit and a medic wounded.
Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, the self-declared mayor of the town, was quoted by Russia’s Interfax news agency as saying two helicopters had been shot down and one pilot had been detained.
The SBU said one helicopter was hit by shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles – evidence, it said, that “trained, highly qualified foreign military specialists” were operating in the area “and not local civilians, as the Russian government says, armed only with guns taken from hunting stores”.
Russia denies involvement but has massed troops on the border and threatened to intervene to protect the Russian-speaking majority in eastern Ukraine from what it calls an illegitimate, Western-backed government in Kiev. Alarmed Western powers believe President Vladimir Putin is set on asserting Moscow’s influence over its former Soviet neighbours.
Armed groups seeking union with Russia have seized a number of government buildings in towns in eastern Ukraine. The action in Slaviansk appeared to mark the heaviest military response by Kiev since it tightened a cordon around the city a week ago.
The militants in Slaviansk are holding a number of local people and seven foreign military observers, four of them German, from the European security agency the OSCE.
Support for the separatist movement is patchier in eastern Ukraine than it was among the majority ethnic Russian population of Crimea, which Moscow seized and annexed in March. However, many are fearful of the new authorities in Kiev and have little faith in Ukraine after 23 years of post-Soviet independence marked by rampant corruption and poor living standards.
