Sunday Times 2
Separatists shoot down Ukraine military plane
View(s):KIEV, June 14 (AFP) – Pro-Russian separatists shot down a Ukrainian military transport plane near the eastern city of Lugansk, killing troops on board, the defence ministry said today as the United States accused Russia of sending tanks and rocket launchers to the pro-Moscow rebels.
“The terrorists cynically and treacherously fired with a large-calibre machine gun hitting an Ilyushin-76 of the Ukrainian air force which was carrying troops on rotation and was about to land at Lugansk airport,” the ministry said in a statement.
The four-engine jet was also carrying “equipment”.
The ministry offered its condolences to the families of the “killed soldiers”, but did not say how many died.
Lugansk, which is close to the Russian border, is the main city of one of two eastern regions hit by pro-Moscow separatist violence and which has declared its independence from Kiev.
An “anti-terrorist” clampdown by Ukrainian armed forces has left at least 270 people dead over the past two months. The attack came less than a week after the rebels fighting Ukraine’s Western-backed government launched attacks on Lugansk International Airport.
The assaults, which took place Saturday evening and Sunday morning in the immediate wake of the inauguration of Ukraine’s new President Petro Poroshenko, did not result in any injuries among the defenders.
But one of the Ukrainian paratroopers guarding the airport told AFP at the time it was clear the rebels were trying to destroy the building which controls the power supply to the airport.
The United States on Friday accused Russia of sending tanks and rocket launchers to pro-Moscow rebels in Ukraine as Kiev’s resurgent forces hoisted the national flag over a strategic rebel-held port amid fears of possible Russian gas cuts.
Moscow said Ukrainian tanks had crossed the border into its territory before being intercepted, a day after Ukraine alleged that three tanks had crossed from Russia into its territory, underscoring the growing tensions between Kiev and Moscow.
Poroshenko told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin that the tanks’ crossing into the former Soviet republic’s separatist east was “unacceptable”.
Washington backed Kiev’s claims, saying separatists in eastern Ukraine had also obtained multiple rocket launchers from Russia among other heavy weapons and military equipment.