After crisis concentrated on Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk, cities of Mariupol and Novoazovsk become latest battlegrounds

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Ukrainian forces are digging in around the southern town of Mariupol, bracing for conflict with separatists after pro-Russian units seized a nearby town threatening to open up a second front in the war in the east.

A mixture of soldiers, police and volunteers are fortifying a checkpoint designed to defend the city of nearly 500,000 from pro-Russian forces who took control of part of the town of Novoazovsk, and are gradually moving towards Mariupol.

When civilian cars approach the exit of the city leading to Novoazovsk, pro-Ukrainian fighters warn them to go back for their own safety. Ukrainian fighters falling back from Novoazovsk say they have not totally given up the town but are outnumbered by their adversaries.

"The right bank [of the river in Novoazovsk] is ours and the left one is not," Leonid Matiukhin, Ukraine's army spokesman, told the Guardian.

"This is an open war of Russia against Ukraine," said a soldier from Dnipro 1 volunteer battalion. "Ask our generals why we still have neither artillery nor aviation support."

The new clashes are significant because so far the six-month crisis has been concentrated on Crimea and two major cities in the east, Donetsk and Luhansk.

Mariupol is Ukraine's 10th-largest city and located about 30 miles (48km) from the Russian border. Several people were killed in clashes in April, but since then the city has been calm and under government control. Now however, the Ukrainians claim that Russian hardware and soldiers have crossed the border to aid the attack on Novoazovsk.

Russia has denied its troops and hardware are in eastern Ukraine. When Ukraine captured 10 paratroopers in the east earlier this month, Moscow said they had got lost and strayed deep into Ukrainian territory.

"There is military equipment in Novoazovsk which came across the border two days ago from Russia," one pro-Ukrainian fighter told Reuters. "The equipment is carrying the flags of the DNR [Donetsk People's Republic] rebels but they are regular Russian forces."

Another fighter who had fallen back on Mariupol told the Guardian that the Russian army had been shelling Ukrainian troops around Novoazovsk for weeks before storming across the border.

He said the Russians had hastily painted the licence plates of their armoured vehicles with white paint and the letters DNR.

"Their tanks are advancing and the howitzers are backing them – these are their tactics," said Aleksey, another Dnipro 1 fighter, whose face was covered by a balaclava. Several villages near the Russian border are totally controlled by Russians, he added.

The mood in Mariupol, where the regional governor moved his office from rebel-controlled Donetsk, is tense but calm. The city authorities have been checking the availability of bomb shelters in basements and factories.

The Guardian saw dozens of Ukrainian armoured vehicle carriers entering Mariupol. Many refugees who fled to the city from embattled Donetsk, Makiivka, Gorlovka and Illovaisk are rapidly fleeing Mariupol, with the number of cars shrinking on the city's roads.

Fighters of Azov, another volunteer Ukrainian battalion, claim that while two months ago Russian nationals made up half of those captured in fighting, now 100% of captives have Russian passports.

"There used to be the special Russian groups that were training the rebels, but now we have the regular Russian army forces," said Oleg Odnorozhenko, deputy head of Azov.

The Azov fighters, mostly from Ukraine's Russian-speaking east, adhere to a far-right ideology. They claim they have some heavy weapons and anticipate receiving more from the Ukrainian government soon.

But as supporters of the pro-European Maidan protests last winter, they feel betrayed by western allies, who they expected to supply Ukraine with weapons instead of using sanctions against the Kremlin.

"The west is acting not rightly – to put it mildly – allowing Putin to increase the aggression," Odnorozhenko said. "No sanctions will force Putin to refrain from his new Soviet project."