Tank troops fight to contain rebel expansion in eastern Ukraine

War escalates as 27 civilians killed in rocket attack and Kiev accuses Moscow of sending more soldiers and hardware across the border

Vadim Ozirny, 46, a Ukrainian tank commander, at his temporary headquarters in Zhelanne, near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine

Vadim Ozirny is hoping for reinforcements.

The 46-year-old Ukrainian tank commander says politicians might yet stop the conflict that grips the east of his country, but supplies of arms from the West would bring a quicker result.

“Can we win this war? Can we bring it to an end? I don’t know. This is not toys; it’s not players on a football field. Give me some British Challengers or German Leopards and the Russians will be afraid to come out against us.”

Captain Ozirny is in charge of 33 men and ten tanks, mostly ageing Soviet T-64s. Last week, he and his company were caught in the thick of battles on the northwest rim of Donetsk, the million-strong city which is the stronghold of pro-Russian separatists.

The war in eastern Ukraine is escalating after months of skirmishes. On Saturday, 27 civilians were reportedly killed and 97 injured when Grad rockets fell on a neighbourhood of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

Government forces are struggling to resist a rebel offensive after the separatists were apparently engorged by fresh supplies of weapons and men provided by Russia.

On Friday, the separatists’ leader announced he was abandoning peace talks and launching a new multi-pronged attack against Ukrainian government troops – striking out from Donetsk and other rebel-held ground, and signalling the final collapse of a peace deal signed in September.

“Attempts to talk about a ceasefire will no longer be undertaken by our side,” said Alexander Zakharchenko, who is head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

Mr Zakharchenko said rebel militia were on the advance in three directions in Donetsk region and also pushing forward in two other areas in the Luhansk region.

“We will hit them until we reach the border of Donetsk region, and ... if I see the danger for Donetsk from any other city, I will destroy this threat there,” he said.

The separatists denied they were behind the devastating missile attack on Mariupol but Mr Zakharchenko said rebels had launched an offensive against the city, a strategic port. "We have begun an attack on Mariupol," he said at a flower-laying ceremony at a bus stop in Donetsk where 13 people were killed in a shelling on Thursday. He also promised to encircle the Ukrainian town of Debaltsevo and "take revenge for our dead".

A car burns on the street after shelling by pro-Russian rebels in Mariupol (Reuters)

A Ukrainian military spokesman said on Saturday that rebels had shelled government forces and attacked checkpoints near the town of Debaltsevo.

Stepan Poltorak, Ukraine’s defence minister, said: “In the last 24 hours the situation has worsened along the whole front: from Lugansk region to Mariupol, illegal armed groups [rebels] are on the attack everywhere.”

More than 5,000 people have died since the revolt in Donbas, or eastern Ukraine, broke out in April.

Ukrainian soldiers and volunteer battalions squeezed back the rebels to a small corner of the southeast of Ukraine last summer after the separatists made initial advances. A Russian military incursion across the countries’ common border helped the separatists regain some territory in September. Infantry clashes and frequent exchanges of shelling have continued ever since, despite an agreement reached that month in Minsk, Belarus, to withdraw from the front line and hand over prisoners.

Now the rebels are on the offensive, while Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, claimed last week that Russia had up to 9,000 men in the conflict zone – something Moscow denies.

Capt Ozirny, whose call sign is Yatagan (a Turkish sabre), is convinced his opponent is Russia. “That country is fighting with mine,” he said. “We can tell by the artillery fire; it’s trained Russian specialists firing at us, people who understand the science of it, not some amateur bandits.”

Moscow has also sent tanks into the conflict, he alleged. “We’ve seen one T-90, which only Russia has, and heard the engines of many T-72s, which couldn’t be trophies taken from us because we have very few in service.”

The Telegraph spoke to the captain and his men in Zhelanne, a village a few miles behind the front lines to which they pulled back in order to mend their machines before returning to fight.

The dilapidated former directorate of a collective farm called Bolshevik serves as the company’s temporary headquarters. The “tankists” sat on iron beds jammed around a wood-burner made from a converted gas cylinder. Snow crusted the windows as the temperature outside dipped below zero.

The men described days of intense fighting. Their forward base at a house in Tonenkoye village was hit while they were out on January 17 by a shell which destroyed the tanks’ target control computer, burned clothes and melted tins of meat.

Last week, Kiev announced it was calling up 50,000 reservists in order to combat the latest bout of “Russian aggression”.

Capt Ozirny, a businessman from Kiev who sells fuel pellets in civilian life and who served in Ukraine’s National Guard in the 1990s, joined up in September.

He is realistic about the task ahead. “Have you ever seen a Russian tank park? They have whole hectares of the things,” he said. “Whenever Russia sends the rebels some weapons they activate and that’s what we’re seeing now.”

So can Ukrainian forces withstand a fresh offensive by the separatists and their allies from Russia? “I believe we will win,” said the captain. “This is our soil. Every chunk of earth is ours. We won’t let anyone come and take it away.”

The company arrived at the front in December but has seen its fiercest action in the last fortnight near and at Donetsk Airport, which has become emblematic of the futility of the war. “We were hiding in the hangars five kilometres (three miles) away and coming out to closer positions to fire on the rebel infantry in the old terminal,” said Gunner Igor Dreychuk. “Once I managed 28 shells in seven minutes.”

Built at a cost of about £540m for the Euro 2012 football tournament, the Donetsk Sergei Prokofiev International Airport – named after the composer born nearby – now stand in ruins that remind many of Stalingrad during the Second World War.

Analysts say the building had some strategic significance as a defensive position or a potential foothold on the edge of the city, but that became eroded with time as its tower and terminals were shredded by artillery.

Despite its dubious advantages, victory at the airport became a coveted prize for both sides as a symbol of their dominance.

Ukrainian troops, known as “cyborgs” for their tenacity, were forced to leave the building last week after months of fighting against militia led by “Motorola” and “Givi”, two commanders lionised by the separatists.

The withdrawal was a blow for Kiev, and a propaganda victory for pro-rebel bloggers, who circulated pictures of dead “cyborgs” sprawled in the rubble, claiming they had been abandoned by their officers.

Sixteen Ukrainian combatants were reportedly taken prisoner and many more died in the final attack by the rebels. “The numbers are very high but they’re being suppressed in order to avoid panic,” said one Ukrainian activist.

The army is putting a brave face on it. Capt Ozirny said: “It wasn’t a defeat, there was just no point in our infantry staying there, there was nothing left. We’re still at the perimeter of the airport and we’ve made our own advances in other settlements nearby.”

Further behind the lines to the north of Donetsk at a base in the town of Kostiantynivka the Telegraph spoke to Ruslan Krivitsyn, a company commander in Ukraine’s 90th Air Assault Battalion. He spent 24 days fighting at the airport, leaving earlier this month, a few days before the final, desperate exchanges.

“That was enough for a lifetime,” he said. “It was very frightening, like a black and white film with the darkness turned down.” At one point the cyborgs and rebel militiamen controlled different floors of the same building, he added. “The night-time was worst. You’re always listening – is someone crawling up on you? It’s psychological warfare.”

Mr Krivitsyn said paratroopers had suffered “great losses” but claimed Ukrainian forces were on the edge of the airport and moving to surround the “terrorists” inside.

Ukrainian forces were redeploying in villages and towns to the northwest of Donetsk late on Friday. In many places, roads were devoid of civilian cars and partridges whirred out of snow drifts. But here and there, columns of up to a dozen self-propelled artillery units were on the move, as well as tanks, Uragan rocket launchers and military trucks.

In televised comments, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, blamed the violence on Ukraine’s government, saying Kiev had “given an official order to start large-scale military operations practically throughout the whole line of contact,” resulting in “dozens of killed and wounded”.

Meanwhile, Roman Turovets, a spokesman for what Kiev calls its “antiterrorist operation” said the flow of Russian troops and military vehicles in southeast Ukraine had become “practically uninterrupted”. A number of Russian soldiers were captured on Friday, he said.

It remains to be seen whether Ukraine – depleted by the war and a deepening financial crisis – has the might and resources to resist a Russian-backed advance.

“There is a huge lack of basic provisions – food, clothes and medicines – in the military,” said Alena Verbitskaya, the head of a charity which delivers such supplies to units close to the front.

Capt Ozirny and his men were delighted with a crate of mandarins brought to their HQ by volunteers.

“Our Ukrainian uniforms are bad quality, they just melt if they catch fire,” said Mr Krivitsyn, at his base in Kostiantynivka. “I bought this British jacket with my own money.”

Turning to Ms Verbitskaya, the paratrooper asked for help: “We don’t even have enough food. We need potatoes, carrots, drinking water, not sweets – real food, rice. Someone sent us some humanitarian aid but we got a parcel of women’s underwear.”

By Tom Parfitt