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Well drilled: The fighters hold their weapons in formation at their training camp just outside Donetsk
Hundreds of fighters from the Russian republic of Chechnya have formed their own ‘Death Battalion’ to join the insurgency in east Ukraine.
The 300 or so volunteers say they are mostly former state security troops in the mainly Muslim region, where Moscow has fought two bloody wars since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Gunmen stormed a building in Chechnya’s regional capital of Grozny on Thursday killing 16 people, including ten police, hours before President Vladimir Putin vowed in a policy speech to defend Russia against what he called efforts to dismember it.
Chechnya’s Kremlin-backed leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, wrote on his Instagram account that “six terrorists were annihilated” after they had opened fire at a police patrol car, killing three officers and then stormed offices housing local media.
Pro-Russian rebels standing guard near the airport in Donetsk
Ukraine’s military have said that its forces and separatist generals have agreed a temporary ceasefire around the airport in rebel-held Donetsk that has been the focus of fighting for months.
Residents around the airport said that a lull in the fighting that has been raging on a nearly-daily basis ensued shortly after the negotiations began.
A 12-year-old boy and a 55-year-old woman were killed by shelling in the eastern Ukrainian separatist stronghold of Donetsk on Thursday, the city administration reported, despite a Sept. 5 ceasefire deal.
According to UN data an average of 13 soldiers, rebels, and civilians have died every day since a formal ceasefire was agreed by Ukraine, Russia and the rebels, with Ukrainian government forces and the separatists accusing each other of violating the terms of the truce.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak has claimed 7500 members of the Russian armed forces are present in his country, “preventing” Kiev from stabilizing the situation in the Donbass.
On Saturday Poltorak issued a statement reading that “unfortunately the stabilization of the situation in the east of Ukraine does not depend only on us.”
