DONETSK, Ukraine - Europe on Monday warned Russia to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty as Moscow turned the screws on Kiev by recognising controversial rebel polls and fighting flared in the separatist east.
Elections in the pro-Russian separatist area deepened international tensions over Ukraine, raising fears that a shaky two-month old truce could collapse.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s top spokesman described as “incomprehensible” Moscow’s endorsement of the vote - in which the Kremlin-backed candidates faced no serious competition - and warned it would “further aggravate the crisis.”
The angry European response raised the temperature in the West’s dispute with Russia over its support for separatists who have torn a swathe of Ukraine’s industrial heartland out from the pro-Western government’s control.
Russia, which risks an intensifying of already punishing EU and US sanctions, ignored Western appeals ahead of the vote and said it “respected” the outcome of the poll that the Ukrainian government branded an illegal “farce.”
“Those elected have received a mandate to resolve the practical issues of re-establishing normal life in the region,” Moscow’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Russia’s deputy foreign minister piled further pressure on Kiev by demanding it call a definitive end to military operations in the east and talk to the rebels on equal terms.
“This work can bring results only on condition of equal dialogue based on mutual respect, with Kiev renouncing military operations and the notorious ‘anti-terror operation’,” Grigory Karasin told state news agency TASS.
Separatist leaders in eastern Ukraine described the polls as a step towards formalising their de facto independence from Ukraine after seven months of fighting in which the United Nations says more than 4,000 people have died.
Russia is likely to be alone in recognising the vote that was held under the watchful eyes of rebel gunmen and boycotted by mainstream international observers.
The fear in Ukraine now is that the vote could finally spell the end for a battered September ceasefire deal.
An AFP journalist in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk reported heavy shelling between government and rebel forces after a day’s lull around the ruins of the city’s disputed international airport.
Fuelling fears that rebels could be readying a fresh offensive, Kiev on Monday repeated claims that it was seeing “intensive” movements of troops and weapons across the frontier.
International observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe - which has been tasked with monitoring the ceasefire - said that an unmanned drone used as part of their mission was shot at from rebel territory Sunday, but not hit.
The separatist uprisings in a corner of Ukraine with long-held pro-Russian leanings started shortly after Russian troops invaded and annexed Crimea, a southern Ukrainian region, in March.
Russia justified that dramatic seizure of its neighbour’s territory by saying it needed to protect ethnic Russians from a surge of Ukrainian nationalism during the previous month’s pro-Western revolution in the capital Kiev.
In the east, Russia says it only provides political and humanitarian aid to the rebels, despite allegations it has sent in weapons and even its own army to back up the insurgency.
Segments of the forces arrayed against Ukraine’s soldiers appear to be as heavily armed and well organised as a fully equipped regular army and long columns of military trucks have frequently been seen in the area of the Ukraine-Russia border.
Under the September truce, whose signatories included Russia, both sides were meant to cease fire as the start of a process leading to autonomy for the pro-Russian areas.
Emboldened by the staging of their vote, rebel leaders indicated they were in little mood for compromise with Kiev.
“Ukraine does not want peace, as it claims. Obviously it is playing a double game,” the newly elected president of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, told journalists.
Zakharchenko, already the undisputed commander in the city of Donetsk, took 75 percent of the roughly one million votes cast, according to final results released by rebel election officials.
The 38-year-old former electrician is set to be officially inaugurated as the rebel republic’s leader Tuesday.
In neighbouring Lugansk region, current insurgent supremo Igor Plotnitsky, a former Soviet army officer, picked up some 63 percent, the rebels said.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko blasted the ballot as a “farce that is being conducted under the threat of tanks and guns”.