Civilians, soldiers die in east Ukraine fighting as Putin visits Crimea

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* Kiev says rebels shelled civilian targets near Mariupol

* Russia’s Lavrov says Kiev is preparing new offensive

* Putin in Crimea to promote tourism -Kremlin (Adds Putin’s comments; paragraphs 5-6, 21-22)

By Richard Balmforth

KIEV, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Fighting flared between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed rebels in separate parts of eastern Ukraine overnight, killing at least two Ukrainian soldiers and several civilians, Kiev’s military and separatist sources said on Monday.

The clashes, near the port of Mariupol in the southeast and at rebel-held Horlivka, further frayed an increasingly tenuous ceasefire as Ukraine prepared to mark its Independence Day next week.

Kiev accused the separatists of shelling civilians on the outskirts of Mariupol. In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed Kiev for the violence, giving no detail but saying he suspected Ukraine was preparing a new offensive.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko meanwhile accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to whip up tensions in eastern Ukraine by visiting Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine last year.

The Kremlin said the aim of Putin’s three-day trip was to hold meetings on ways to develop the Black Sea peninsula and promote tourism there.

“I am sure, that despite all the current difficulties, the situation in Ukraine will improve and Ukraine will develop positively,” Putin said.

But the escalation in fighting has drawn expressions of concern from Western governments, which regard the ceasefire and tentative peace agreement worked out in Minsk, Belarus, in February as still the best chance of ending the rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the rebels had used howitzers with a range of 15-16 km (10 miles) to shell Sartana, on Mariupol’s northern edge.

“The enemy was not shelling Ukrainian positions, but a civilian town,” he told a briefing. “The enemy has now adopted the tactic of firing and then quickly withdrawing. The next time they’ll get a quick response. What has happened in Sartana is a challenge to our forces.”

He said two Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and seven wounded by separatists in the past 24 hours.

“GRAVE CONCERN”

Regional police said at least one man and a young woman had been killed in Sartana.

“On one street there were five houses that were really badly damaged by shell fragments. One house had a well-tended garden with vines and a vegetable patch. But the house had been wrecked by shells and I saw an enormous pool of blood,” a local news photographer, Mykola Ryabchenko, told Reuters by telephone.

The separatist website DAN quoted the separatist mayor of Horlivka as saying at least three people had been killed and four wounded as a result of government shelling of the town, a regular hot spot north of the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

Lysenko said the rebels had used heavy weapons including Grad rockets in attacks on government forces around Horlivka.

The upsurge in fighting combined with low oil prices on Monday to undermine Russia’s rouble, which touched a six-month low against the dollar.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last week expressed “grave concern” to Lavrov over a rise in separatist attacks, and urged an immediate halt to shooting.

Germany’s foreign minister said the situation was explosive and urged the parties to prevent a spiral in violence.

More than 6,500 people have been killed in the conflict, which erupted in April 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea in reaction to the fall of a Moscow-backed president in Kiev.

Moscow went on to support the rebels in pressing for greater autonomy but denies sending them soldiers or arms, despite what the West and Kiev say is irrefutable proof.

Poroshenko called Putin’s visit to Crimea “a continuation of the plan to escalate the situation” as Ukraine prepares to mark its Independence Day on Aug. 24.

Putin criticised his Ukrainian counterpart for appointing foreign specialists and advisors to key government posts, such as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who became governor of Ukraine’s southern Odessa region in May.

“Stop this shameful practice,” he said. “It is humiliating for the Ukrainian people.”

Flight MH17 and the RUSSIAN sa-11 Buk

The tragic destruction of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was a sadly predictable result of Russia supplying the powerful and long-ranged SA-11 “Buk” surface to air missile systems to separatists in eastern Ukraine who had no access to state air traffic control information.
The SA-11 system which was used to shoot down MH17 is a Russian-built, heavy anti-aircraft missile launcher coupled to a phased-array radar on a tracked chassis.

It is designed to engage military aircraft and missiles at altitudes of up to 72,000ft. It is in service with the Russian and Ukrainian armed forces, as well as other forces around the world.

In recent days, there have been multiple sightings of SA-11 systems in separatist hands near Donetsk reported on social media. This is close to where the airliner was shot down. On Monday 14 July, separatists shot down a Ukrainian Air Force An-26 military transport aircraft which was flying at above 22,000ft.

This incident signalled a significant rise in the anti-aircraft capabilities of the separatists since, up until this week, the only anti-aircraft missile systems seen in their possession were man-portable air defence systems (Manpads) such as SA-18 and SA-24 which are not capable of hitting aircraft flying above 19,500ft. As well as being incapable of engaging high-altitude targets, they are of limited use against the armoured Su-25 attack jets deployed by the Ukrainian Air Force.

After recent separatist defeats around Slavyansk, Russia evidently decided to supply their allies in eastern Ukraine with the much more powerful SA-11 system to check the advance of the Ukrainian anti-terror operation, which has been making heavy and increasing use of air power.

Almost certainly what occurred on Thursday was that separatists targeted what they assumed to be another An-26 transport flying at high altitude and shot it down using the same SA-11 systems employed earlier in the week. As the story broke, separatist social media accounts boasted of shooting down another An-26, only for these posts to be swiftly removes as it became clear an airliner was missing, and separatist leaders realised what they had actually hit.
system usually includes several launch vehicles and a command vehicle with a larger radar array, to coordinate the targeting of the launch vehicles. However, only the launch vehicles have been seen in eastern Ukraine. This means that the system used to bring down MH-17 was most likely being operated using the smaller integrated radar on the launch vehicle itself, and possibly by separatists unfamiliar with its specific functionalities.

Given that there seems to be little doubt that an SA-11 system was used to shoot down MH17, the question must now be who is responsible. Russian and separatist claims that the Ukrainian military is responsible are absurd. The Ukrainian military has absolutely no reason to have deployed their SA-11’s anywhere near Donetsk as the separatists do not use aircraft and shooting down a Russian aircraft violating its airspace is that last thing that Kiev wants.

Given the strength of reaction from Moscow over a single artillery shell which landed on the Russian side of the border last week, and the fears over direct Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine, Ukrainian forces are being extremely careful to avoid actions which could give a pretext for Russian retaliation. However, the separatists have been shooting down aircraft over eastern Ukraine for weeks using surface to air missiles.

This is simply a tragic case of incorrect target selection by separatists using a weapons system which was much more powerful than previously seen in the conflict, and capable of reaching MH-17 and 33,000ft.

Unlike state operators of the system who are linked to national air traffic control networks, the separatists in Donetsk had no information about international flights and probably did not consider the possibility.

This is exactly why the international community has up to now been very careful to avoid non-state actors acquiring advanced anti-aircraft missile systems such as the SA-11 which Russia supplied to its proxies in Donetsk this week.