HNUTOVE, Ukraine – Weighed down by heavy flak
jackets and helmets, and shouldering Kalashnikov automatic rifles,
Ukrainian soldiers trudge through a worsening blizzard towards the front
line on Jan. 6, Ukrainian Christmas Eve.
Most wear snow camouflage uniforms, mainly white with streaks of
black – to make it harder for the Russian snipers operating all along
the front lines to spot them. The previous week, on the first day of
2019, Russian snipers a few kilometers from here shot a Ukrainian
soldier – the first Ukrainian killed in action this year.
Tramping on, occasionally slipping on rocks, ruts and holes concealed
under the snow, gunfire comes in staccato volleys from the Russian
positions, several hundred meters beyond the Ukrainian trenches, muted
by the swirling snow flurries.
Land bridge
The soldiers were heading to a forward operating base on the front
lines, some 15 kilometers northeast of the Azov Sea port of Mariupol, a
city of 446,000 located 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
This is a place that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has been eager
to capture since his forces invaded Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and
occupied a large swathe of the country’s eastern Donbas region in 2014.
Journalist and "FTG" columnist Askold Krushelnycky
Putin needs Mariupol if he is to build a land bridge between the
Ukrainian territory he has snatched in Donbas and Crimea. The port is
also the gateway for a huge slice of Ukrainian steel and other exports,
vital to the economy. Moscow has used its navy to impede foreign
merchant ships sailing to Mariupol.
Citing Ukraine Business News, Swedish economist Anders Aslund notes
that the 22-berth port last year only operated at 28 percent of
capacity, and volume fell to 5.3 million tons, 10 percent below 2017
levels. And Aslund, again citing Ukraine Business News, tweeted that a
“second blow” to shipping came with Russia’s opening of the Kerch Strait
Bridge with only a only a 35-meter high central arch, too low for 30
percent of the cargo ships that historically serviced Mariupol.
In November, Russian ships, helicopters and planes shelled and rammed
three small Ukrainian Navy vessels trying to maintain Ukraine’s rights
under international maritime law to navigate the area. The attack, which
resulted in 24 Ukrainian crew captured and three wounded, has ratcheted
up tension in the area.
Many fear the aggression, the first time Moscow’s military attacked
Ukrainian forces openly instead of pretending it was the work of their
“separatist” puppets, was a prelude to a major attempt to seize more
Ukrainian territory.
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Askold Krushelnycky
became the Kyiv Post’s Washington, D.C. correspondent in May 2018. He
has been a journalist for 40 years, mainly with British newspapers
starting in 1978. During the 1990s, he reported in Europe on the fall of
communism, political transformations and conflicts, including the
Balkans. From 1997 to 2011, he was based in Moscow, but also served as
chief editor of the Kyiv Post in 1998. He then went to Prague. He was
assistant foreign editor at The Sunday Times of London and became that
newspaper’s South Asia correspondent, based in New Delhi, to cover
India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. He worked frequently in the
Middle East. In 2006, his book “An Orange Revolution – A Personal
Journey Through Ukrainian History,” was published by Random
House/Harvill Secker. He was born in London. His parents were World War
II refugees from Ukraine. He received a bachelor’s degree in industrial
chemistry. In 2011, he and his wife moved to Washington, D.C. He became a
U.S. citizen in 2016.
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