Ukrainian forces free Svyatohirsk, Russia threatens military invasion

In what seems to be its first act after the resumption of an anti-terror operation to purge Russian-backed separatists from eastern Ukraine, the country’s elite Interior Ministry forces “liberated” the resort town of Svyatohirsk in northern Donetsk Oblast “from unlawful armed groups,” the ministry reported on its website.

Ukrainian security officials had discovered the city’s monastery, the Svyatohirsk Assumption Lavra , was serving as a military base for the insurgents who have besieged the region.

“The Interior Ministry’s special forces have freed the town of Svyatohirsk from an illegal armed group of separatists. Law enforcers who took part in the anti-terrorist operation drove the illegal armed groups out of the town There have been no casualties,” the ministry’s report reads. Police are now patrolling and securing the city, it says.

Svyatohirsk is very strategically important as it is located at the border of three regions: Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk.

Armed pro-Russian insurgents seized and occupied key Ukrainian government buildings in the country’s eastern regions in early April. In recent days they have taken at least 16 persons, including journalists, hostage, tightened their grip on the regions and promised a long fight should Kyiv send in troops to force them out.

Separatist leader and self-appointed mayor of Sloviansk Vyacheslav Ponomaryov reportedly told a BBC journalist that “we will make Stalingrad out of this town,” referring to the five-month-long, bloody World War II battle in which the Soviet Red Army defeated the Nazis.

As Kyiv resumed its anti-terror operation, Russia Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov issued a stern warning that his country would “certainly respond” if Russians were attacked. “Russian citizens being attacked is an attack against the Russian Federation,” he said in an interview with the state-run Russia Today. “If our interests, our legitimate interests, the interests of Russians have been attacked directly, like they were in South Ossetia for example, I do not see any other way but to respond in accordance with international law,” he said.