Pro-Russia rebels parade Ukrainian captives
Ukraine marked its independence day on Sunday with a military march past in Kiev intended to send a message of defiance to Russia, but pro-Moscow rebels countered by parading captured Ukrainian troops through the streets in their stronghold.
The rival events showed the divide that will need to be bridged if a compromise on Ukraine is to be reached on Tuesday when Russian President Vladimir Putin meets his Ukrainian counterpart for the first time in months.
Ukrainian forces are trying to snuff out a pro-Moscow separatist rebellion in the east of the country, and on Sunday intense artillery fire could be heard around the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
In Kiev’s Independence Square – scene of the protests that pushed out a Moscow-backed president and precipitated the crisis – Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko reviewed columns of men and armoured vehicles.
Some of the troops in the march-past were, Poroshenko said, shortly heading to the front line in eastern Ukraine.
In a speech, directed at Moscow, which Kiev alleges is behind the rebellion, Poroshenko said his country was fighting “a war against external aggression, for Ukraine, for its freedom, for its people, for independence.”
“It is clear that in the foreseeable future a constant military threat will hang over Ukraine. We must always be prepared to defend the independence of our country.”
Poroshenko announced that about $3 billion would be spent on re-equipping the Ukrainian army in 2015-2017.
After protests ousted Ukraine’s Kremlin-backed leader, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March and parts of the Russian-speaking east rebelled against Kiev.
Kiev and its Western allies say Moscow has responded to advances by government forces by funnelling weapons and men into eastern Ukraine to shore up the struggling rebellion, an allegation that Moscow denies.
