Rebel ambush near Kramatorsk kills seven Ukrainian paratroopers; one rebel dead (UPDATED)

The Defense Ministry said that the heavily armed rebels fired rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons at the convoy of Ukrainian paratroopers near the village of Oktyabrske about 20 kilometers outside Kramatorsk. 

“More than 30 attackers arrived early and were located along the river in the bushes. The first shot from a grenade launcher by terrorists hit the engine of an (armored vehicle) which approached a bridge. There was an explosion. Another (armored vehicle) tried to push the damaged fighting machine that caught fire away from the village. The servicemen decided to engage in a fight,” reads the Defense Ministry statement.

“After the first salvo, terrorists with heavy weapons killed two soldiers, wounding another three,” the Ministry said. Overall, as a result of prolonged clashes, seven members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were killed. One paratrooper who was badly wounded in the skirmish died while being transported to a hospital on board a helicopter. Seven others suffered wounds with varying degrees of severity. All the wounded and dead were evacuated, according to the Ministry. 

Donetsk news website Novosti Donbassa reported that rebel forces captured the chief of the Ukrainian Eastern Territorial Command, Colonel Yuriy Lebed, during the assault. Previously he had led a special-purpose regiment of Interior Ministry troops in Crimea. After the peninsula was annexed by Russia, he refused to change sides and relocated to mainland Ukraine. 

Hours after the incident, rebel leaders confirmed to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency that they had destroyed to armored personnel carriers and that one of their fighters had died in the assault. 

“It is true that there was an armed clash. We destroyed two enemy APCs (armored personnel carriers). However, unfortunately, one of our militiamen was killed. The enemy has retreated,” rebel leaders in Kramatorsk said.

Military expert and director of the Kyiv-based Information Resistance Dmitry Tymchuk wrote on Facebook that the paratroopers of the 95th airborne brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine embedded near Kramatorsk were transporting ammunition and were involved in the ongoing counter-terrorism operation to purge armed rebels from the several eastern Ukrainian cities in which they have seized control.

“According to preliminary information, terrorists with grenades destroyed a truck carrying ammunition, and then got into a fight,” Tymchuk wrote.

Amid the attack, “a bus came to the aid of the 30-40 militants,” he said. “By helicopters came paratrooper reinforcements.”

The gun battle was merely the latest in a string of deadly clashes over the past several weeks that has led to dozens of people killed on both sides of the ongoing conflict that seems to be edging dangerously close to civil war, one side of which appears to be led from Moscow.

Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected], and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM. 

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