Ukraine's tattered cease-fire came under new strain Wednesday as shelling killed two teenagers playing football in rebel-held Donetsk and President Petro Poroshenko said he was deploying reinforcements to face a threatened separatist offensive. In another sign of Ukraine's ever more permanent looking break-up, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk announced he was cutting subsidies to the rebel Donetsk and Lugansk regions, so as not to finance "terrorists".
A government source told AFP the measures would include scrapping pensions for hundreds of thousands of people living in separatist areas. Although large-scale military action has ceased in the ex-Soviet republic since a September cease-fire was signed, sporadic artillery fire is exacting a daily toll, feeding fears that the truce will collapse.
On Wednesday, heavy bombardments raged around Donetsk's former international airport, where government forces are holding out against besieging separatists. One shell landed in a nearby school football field and killed two boys aged 14 and 18. AFP journalists saw two corpses covered by a tarpaulin and witnesses said at least four others had been wounded.
In "intensified" shelling elsewhere, two soldiers were killed and nine wounded in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. "Also, the delivery of significant amounts of military hardware and personnel from Russia to territory controlled by rebels hasn't stopped," the spokesman said, reiterating constant allegations - denied by Moscow - that Russia is actively fighting on the rebel side. The truce has become ever more fragile since rebels defied the government Sunday and held elections that they described as legitimising their two self-declared independent states. Analysts say the Ukrainian government's biggest worry is the threat by Russian-backed separatists to capture the Azoz Sea port of Mariupol. From there, analysts say, separatists could push along the coast to establish a land corridor linking Russia to Crimea, which Russia annexed in March.
Poroshenko said late Tuesday he had ordered troop reinforcements to cities across the east to guard against any "offensive in the direction of Mariupol, Berdyansk, Kharkiv and Lugansk". "Several new units and groupings have been formed, which will already allow us to stop any possible attack," Poroshenko said. "The supplying of our armed forces with the very latest technology - offensive, reconnaissance, guided systems - is continuing quite effectively." Yatsenyuk signalled a tougher line on another front, announcing an end to subsidies for the eastern regions.
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