city:novoazovsk

Azov Battalion spearheads Ukrainian counter-offensive
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/kyiv-post-plus/azov-battalion-spearheads-ukrainian-counter-offensive-380136.html

Ukraine’s Azov Battalion, famed for its near-suicidal bravery and ultra-nationalist views, is spearheading a Ukrainian counter-offensive along the country’s Black Sea coast today.

Posting a picture of their troops on Feb. 10 outside Pavlopil town hall, some 35 kilometers northeast of their base in the strategic port city of Mariupol, the battalion said that it had also seized the villages of Oktyabyr and Shyrokyne on their way to assault the Russian and separatist-held city of Novoazovsk.

“Ukrainian flags are already flying on government buildings in Pavlopil, Oktyabyr and Shyrokyne,” Azov Battalion press officer Andrii Biletski told the Kyiv Post live from the offensive.

“Our exact position now is secret, but we’re going all the way to Novoazovsk.”

Alors que plus au nord, Debaltseve est encerclée, la milice néo-nazie progresse le long de la Mer Noire et se donne pour objectif d’atteindre la frontière.

Ukraine Retreats in Effort to Isolate Rebel Stronghold - WSJ
▻http://online.wsj.com/articles/putin-lashes-out-at-ukraine-over-failure-of-talks-1409312151

(ordre des extraits inversé)

Along Ukraine’s southern coast, where Kiev said Russian forces helped open a third front this past week, the Russians and rebels dug in at the border town of Novoazovsk and shelled Ukrainian positions on the road to the port city of Mariupol, said Col. Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman.

But rebel claims that they had that city nearly encircled weren’t confirmed by witnesses. Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, who arrived in Mariupol on Friday, reported the situation was calm, while noting “significant movement of Ukrainian military vehicles—mainly armored personnel carriers.”

Elsewhere, however, the rebels appear to gaining ground after weeks of losses.

On Friday, a volunteer unit fighting for Kiev said it was outnumbered and was forced to abandon two key villages on a road linking Luhansk to Russia, a blow for Kiev’s efforts to encircle that city.

There were conflicting reports of whether Kiev’s forces were driven out of the strategic highland of Savur-Mohyla, south of Donetsk, which Ukrainian forces retook after heavy fighting last month.

“The situation remains very complex,” said Col. Lysenko.

(…)

Adding to the tension, the Ukrainian government proposed repealing a law banning membership in military blocs and moving toward joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a day after NATO said more than 1,000 Russian troops are fighting alongside the rebels in eastern Ukraine. Russia has said such a move would be a threat to its national interest.

Residents of Mariupol get ready to defend city from Russian troops
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/residents-of-mariupol-get-ready-to-defend-city-from-russian-troops-362638.

On Aug. 29, several dozen men and women, wearing gardening gloves, took spades out of a car and rushed to the military checkpoint located at the eastern road leading to the city of Mariupol.

This important checkpoint is set on the road that leads from the town of Novoazovsk, which had been taken over by the Russian troops. The National Guard who man it split the volunteers into two groups and showed them the places where they should dig trenches on both sides of the road.

The previous day, some 2,000 people rallied in city center against the Russian invasion, and the most active of them decided to come and help the Ukrainian troops to defend their city from an anticipated invasion by the Russians.
(…)
But people of Mariupol are actually split over whether to support or resist the Russian troops. Many have preferred to simply leave the city. There were long lines of people wanting to leave Mariupol at the local bus stop in the morning, the local web-site Novosti Mariupolia reported. The Kyiv Post saw three buses with children heading from the summer camps located in the outskirts of Mariupol on the way to Novoazovsk.

But the pro-Ukrainian activists realize that they are a minority in Mariupol, where fierce fights between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian battalions lead to several deaths in April. The fighters of Dnipro 1 and Azov local battalions told the Kyiv Post in private conversations that they often been insulted or threatened by the locals. Because of this internal controversy in the city, the fighters of the Mariupol battalion are being trained in small groups separately from each other to avoid leaks of information.

http://www.kyivpost.com/media/images/2014/08/29/p190heo8bigsm142n1p6egtd1nqo4/big.jpg

Ukraine detains Russian paratroopers ; U.S. ambassador warns of ‘counteroffensive’ - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/putin-will-meet-with-ukrainian-counterpart-in-high-stakes-summit-amid-tense-situation/2014/08/26/875db403-5b7b-4d89-8443-5aee1bde6345_story.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2014/08/26/Foreign/Images/Ukraine-01ebc.jpg

Smoke rises after shelling in the town of Novoazovsk, eastern Ukraine. Towering columns of smoke rose Tuesday from outside a city in Ukraine’s far southeast after what residents said was a heavy artillery barrage.
Sergei Grits/AP

Novoazovsk, comme son nom l’indique sur la mer d’Azov, donc au sud des combats connus jusqu’à maintenant.