MARIUPOL, Ukraine -- As Ukraine's president and other world leaders talk about a cease-fire deal, fighting is closer than ever to the major eastern city of Mariupol. Ukrainian forces and eyewitnesses said that there was a battle in a town just 15 miles away on Thursday.
Border guards at a checkpoint leaving Mariupol going eastwards toward Shyrokine said Ukraine had lost the town to the “Russians.” One local said fighting started at noon; black smoke could be seen rising from the area. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko also confirmed there was a tank attack on the town.
Smoke from Shyrokine near #Mariupol. Woman who fled there said fighting began at 11am pic.twitter.com/0gpUrW1AyD— Kristina Jovanovski (@kjovano) September 4, 2014
“I got a big shrapnel in my yard,” one man said. A woman chimes in, “Yes, we were sitting there, they started rolling off the roof ... terrible.”
Three cement structures meant to stop tanks were placed at the end of one road that goes into Shyrokine. Seven more of these structures stood in the distance on another rural road.
In the distance cement structures to stop tanks outside of #Mariupol pic.twitter.com/RYqOiNlvcV— Kristina Jovanovski (@kjovano) September 4, 2014
Two armed men in camouflage -- one showed a French passport and the other from Croatia -- were staggering down the road, heading away from Shyrokine. Seemingly exhausted and pleading for help, they said they fled the fighting because they were afraid for their lives.
One of the men's left eye was wounded, and a line of dried blood was pasted to the side of his face. Though the two men didn't have any identification on their uniforms, they said they were with the Azov Battalion, a pro-Ukraine volunteer group with links to the far-right fighters that have been battling pro-Russian rebels in the east.
However, these uniformed men said they were not fighting rebels in Shyrokine.
“It was definitely the Russians,” one man said. “They were too good.”
The fighters said it was not safe to go further down the road and that there were Russian Cossacks -- a group of people who belong to democratic, semi-military communities -- in the town.
Behind them was 59-year-old Elena who was walking away from the town. Wearing white slippers and holding a grocery bag, she said she was working at a sewage treatment plant when she said she heard heavy shelling starting around 11 a.m. from the eastern rebel-held town of Novoazovsk, which is about six miles away from Shyrokine, near the Russian border.
“[There’s] a lot. First a bit, [then] incessantly for an hour,” she said, adding that the shelling was still going on when she left.
She said there were summer camps that were bombed nearby, but children had not been attending the camps for awhile.
Ready for cease-fire
As fighting raged in Ukraine's east, the country's president Petro Poroshenko said he's ready to order a cease-fire in the east starting on Friday.
Earlier this week, Poroshenko claimed he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had reached a cease-fire deal, but he backtracked after the Kremlin denied those reports, saying Putin could not agree to such deal because "he is not party to the conflict."
Additionally, several other cease-fires in the past have crumbled on the front lines in the east, where nearly 2,600 people have been killed in the conflict since April. The rebels ignored a 10-day unilateral cease-fire that Poroshenko had called in June.
However, all parties seemed ready for true cease-fire on Thursday as both Ukraine and the pro-Russian separatists appeared increasingly close to signing a deal. NATO leaders, including President Barack Obama, also expressed support for Ukraine at a NATO summit Thursday.
Poroshenko said he'll make the cease-fire official on Friday if a peace deal is signed that day at talks in Minsk, Belarus. The rebels also said they were ready to declare a truce Friday if an agreement with Ukraine is reached on a political settlement for the mostly Russian-speaking region.
Bloodshed is real in the southeast
Back in Mariupol, the city was calm with residents walking around town and public transportation running as usual. Hundreds gathered in the city center for a pro-Ukraine rally.
About 2,000 attend #Mariupol "unity rally" for #Ukraine, hours after artillery fire heard to east if town. pic.twitter.com/Cr7wTzHCvi— Dan McLaughlin (@DanMcL99) September 4, 2014
However, at the hospital there were clear signs of fighting that day.
One pro-Ukrainian fighter with the Azov Battalion said he took another wounded fighter to the hospital where he was under operation for a stomach wound.
“He [was] brought to me and I gave him… medical help,” he said, adding that the fighter was injured by artillery near Shyrokine.
The man though did not know who attacked the fighter. “They didn’t see… they were hiding in the shelters,” he said.
This fighter from Azov Battalion says he brought in fighter with stomach wound who was sent into surgery pic.twitter.com/1xYwCAgJJh— Kristina Jovanovski (@kjovano) September 4, 2014
A woman walked through the doors at the hospital shortly after our interview. She was followed by two men helping another wounded fighter into a room. Groaning in pain, the man’s nose was seemingly crushed and black as blood streamed from his face. They said they were from a unit with the Ukrainian boarder guard and were shelled by tanks.
One of the fighters helping the wounded man stopped to hand his rifle to another person in his group. A bloody open wound was visible on his shoulder.