In the nearly five months since that deal, none of that has happened. Instead, Russia has funneled in more weapons and forces, according to the West, Kiev has bolstered its front lines and mobilized more troops, and the rebels have gone on the attack.
Only recently when a secret part of the Minsk deal was leaked to Ukrainian news outlet ZN.uawas it made clear that the deal actually handed the airport to the rebels.
An accompanying letter from Russian President Vladimir Putin to his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, included in the leak, asked also that Kiev recognize territorial gains made by the rebels since the ceasefire. The government has not done that and said it will not. Conceding more ground to the separatists would be viewed by the Ukrainian public as an indefensible surrender of sovereign land.
Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions make up an area of around 20,000 square miles that before the war accounted for about 15% of the country’s population. In the early days of the conflict, the separatists claimed controlled of nearly all of that.
But after Kiev’s military operation reached its stride, the separatists were forced to retreat to an area some 75% smaller. However, they held onto the regions’ capital cities and much of the regions’ borders with Russia.
In recent days, their offensive has won them Donetsk International Airport and more ground in Luhansk region, as well as Krasny Partizan, an important junction northeast of Donetsk that sits at a strategic checkpoint near Luhansk.
A graphic video of the scene at Krasny Partizan shortly after the rebel assault posted by a rebel information agency shows separatist flags flying overheard and the lifeless bodies of Ukrainian troops on the roadside.
Whatever doubt there was at the beginning of the conflict has since been replaced by plenty of evidence proving Russia’s hand in the war and its support of the separatists. While some may doubt Poroshenko’s words, that some 9,000 Russian troops are currently on the ground here in eastern Ukraine, there is enough verified information to prove their presence.
Russian military materiel that could not have been captured but only sent from Russia has been observed on the battlefields.
Current-serving Russian soldiers have been captured by Kiev’s government forces in eastern Ukraine, while the bodies of others killed in battle have been quietly repatriated and buried.
Moreover, fighters on the ground have admitted to journalists, including me, that they left their posts to join the rebel ranks, or that they were forced by commanders to volunteer to fight in eastern Ukraine.
However, Russia continues to deny it is involved in the war here.
Once the gem of the region, Donetsk International Airport, built for almost $1 billion dollars just over two years ago, today is in ruins. Occupying the northwestern edge of the region’s capital city, it is strategic in that it could be used by Moscow to resupply the rebels, or utilized by Kiev to encircle and squeeze them.
For those reasons — and out of sheer pride — the hotly contested site has seen the worst of the fighting since the very onslaught of the conflict.
Mark Galeotti, a Russian security expert and professor of global affairs at New York University, highlighted the airport’s strategic and symbolic significance on his blog earlier this month.
Countless numbers of Ukrainian soldiers and Russian-backed rebels died fighting for it. Nobody knows how many bodies remain buried beneath the rubble.
President Poroshenko staked his reputation on the fight for the airport, saying, “If we give up Donetsk [airport], the enemy will be at Borispil or Gostomel or even in Lviv.” He hailed the troops defending it, dubbed “cyborgs” for their uncanny endurance, as national heroes.
But last week, it fell into the hands of the rebels. While the twisted mess of metal it has become useless, the defeat there dealt a crushing blow to Ukrainians’ psyche and gave rebels the momentum.
The seaside city of Mariupol, with over 500,000 residents and vital infrastructure, is the largest city in the eastern war zone controlled by Kiev. While it has seen sporadic fighting since the start of the war, it has remained mostly in Ukrainian hands.
On Saturday, it was the scene of a gruesome rocket attack that killed at least 30 people. Investigators from Human Rights Watch and monitors from the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said evidence indicated the rebels were behind the assault.
On Friday the rebel leader, Alexander Zakharchenko, said they would be no more cease-fires with Ukraine and vowed to go on the offensive. Late Saturday in Donetsk he said the attack on Mariupol had begun.
For the rebels, controlling Mariupol’s ports would allow Russia another route in which to send reinforcements. It would also put the two closer to creating a land bridge between Russia and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow invaded and annexed in March.
Meanwhile, the situation in strategic Debaltseve is intensifying. Its rail lines and highway connect to other major cities in the region and to southwestern Russia. Their transport potential makes the town extremely valuable to the rebels, who have positions all around. In fact, they have nearly encircled the several thousand Ukrainian troops who hold a position on the north side of the important junction town.
For months, the two have lobbed shells at one another. As a result, much of Debaltseve is in ruins. Many of its 30,000 residents have fled. The town has just one major highway running through it. That leaves the Ukrainians with only one escape route, across a bridge that has been blown up once already and patched with flimsy metal beams.
The biggest fear is that a rebel offensive could knock the bridge out and seal the Ukrainian troops off, in which case they would be sitting ducks, much like they were in Ilovaisk, a town near Donetsk where hundreds were killed during a rebel push backed by Russian forces in late August.
The rebels are led by a former mine engineer, Alexander Zakharchenko, a blue-eyed, bashful man who prefers battle fatigues to a suit and tie. He came to power last summer after replacing Alexander Borodai, a Russian citizen from Moscow with close ties to the Kremlin.
Zakharchenko won a sham vote in November in Donetsk to remain head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. While he is supported by a motley crew of locals, it is much more likely that the orders are coming from Moscow than directly from him. Case in point: a mere two hours after essentially declaring war on Kiev, telling a crowd in Donetsk on Saturday that “the attack on Mariupol has begun,” he walked back his statement in a rushed press conference that had just one Russia news outlet present.
The rebels are well equipped. Early on, they stormed military bases and captured Ukrainian armor and artillery. But mostly they’re materiel has come from Russia. Aging Soviet-era multiple-launch rocket systems, self-propelled artillery, anti-aircraft and anti-tank shoulder-fired weapons as well as countless small automatic arms have flowed freely across borders under their control.
The video below shows some of that armor, as well as at least four Dozer-N armored vehicles identified by bellingcat.com. Ukraine does not have the vehicles.
Organizationally, they’ve been able to mobilize fighters across the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and hold their own in fights with the regular Ukrainian army, as evidenced in their victory at Donetsk airport.
