Weapons and Vehicles Lie Abandoned as Ukraine Rebels Make Headway

With munitions dumped in the center of town and military vehicles left by the roadside, the town of Starobesheve has the air of a place abandoned.

Situated on the road between the rebel stronghold of Donetsk and the Azov Sea to the south, the town bore all the signs on Wednesday of a hasty retreat by the Ukrainian army.

After months of bruising fighting, a counter-offensive announced recently by pro-Russian separatists seems to be making headway with rebels appearing to have successfully seized swathes of territory from government forces.

The security spokesman for the Ukrainian army, Andriy Lysenko, admitted that Starosbesheve had fallen to Donetsk separatists and, he claimed, "Russian occupiers".

The flags and checkpoints in the region told a similar story.

In the port of Novoazovsk, some 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Donetsk, an army checkpoint that had guarded the west of the city only a day before had disappeared.

On the road from there to Donetsk -- in areas where Ukraine flags once waved proudly over town halls -- Agence France Presse journalists found no signs of government troops. All checkpoints were apparently in the hands of the separatists, the colored ribbons of the rebels pinned to their fatigues.

In Starobesheve, around 30 kilometers south of Donetsk, the only signs of the army remaining by Wednesday lunchtime were the weapons and vehicles they had left behind.

Near a farm where locals say the Ukrainian forces had made their base lay dozens of munitions cases, grenades, RPG rockets, mines, and artillery shells.

As a local teenager emptied out one abandoned vehicle, a gun was lifted back into position by the locals. Scattered on the floor were military rations, medical equipment, and a gas mask.

North of the town, one Ukrainian army vehicle sat in the middle of the road, its tires blown, while nearby, on the side of an abandoned tank, the word "mined" was painted.

According to residents, Ukrainian troops had been in the town for over a month, but they fled on Monday when the town was hit by shelling.

"The soldiers said "We're leaving, an attack is coming from the Russian border", some 30 kilometers away, said one resident, who gave her name only as Natalia.

By Wednesday, artillery explosions and the sound of automatic weapons could still be heard in Starobesheve, but by now it was the separatists who held the town.

Rebel reinforcements arrived later, including a sniper with a long red beard at the head of a battalion.

Asked if they had been there long, one of them smiled. "More or less," he said, with a smile, saying he had been there "incognito".

It was impossible to say if any of the fighters were Russian soldiers, as Kiev has alleged.

But the Ukrainian army also claims that a column of 100 vehicles, among them tanks and armored vehicles equipped with Grad rockets, have been spotted in the Starobesheve region.

When asked about tire tracks left on the road nearby, a Ukrainian military source said they belonged to Russian vehicles.

Locals, however, said that if the tracks were left on Tuesday, they probably belonged to the Ukrainian army, the last trace of them as they fled to the south.