Ukraine flaunts military in parade

Armored vehicles and soldiers paraded on Kiev's main square on Sunday to mark Independence Day in a display of the military force Ukraine's government hopes will defeat separatists in the country's eastern region.

Soldiers, some of whom were due to head directly to the front in the war against separatists, marched past Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who told them that the war they were fighting would go into the history books.

Vehicles armed with anti-tank weapons and machine guns, and trucks towing missile systems, followed behind the columns of soldiers.

"Before you, a new military column is heading directly to the zone of the anti-terrorist operation," Poroshenko said.

He vowed to boost military spending by 40 billion hryvnia ($3 billion) in the next three years as government forces seek to overpower pro-Russian separatists in the east.

Poroshenko said the country would increase military spending by $3 billion by 2017. The Ukrainian defense ministry says its existing 2014 budget is $1.5 billion.

Kiev's Independence Square - known locally as the 'Maidan', which was the crucible of street protests that toppled former president Viktor Yanukovych - was bedecked with the blue-and-yellow flag of Ukraine.

Many of the thousands of people who turned out in sunshine for celebrations wore traditional Ukrainian embroidered shirts and blouses or wrapped the national flag around their shoulders.

Program coordinators said the 1,500 service personnel taking part included about 120 men who had already seen action on the eastern front in areas near the rebel strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Earlier, before the march, Poroshenko and his family placed wreaths and knelt down before shrines honoring some of the 100 or so street protesters who were killed by snipers in February just off the Maidan in the last days of president Yanukovich's rule.

The United Nations says more than 2,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in April in Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking east following Russia's annexation of Crimea.

In recent weeks government troops have gained the upper hand against the separatists, pushing them back into their main strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Fighting continued early on Sunday as artillery bombs rained down on central Donetsk, where one of the city's biggest hospitals is located.

Rebels laid out destroyed Ukrainian military hardware in the city's Lenin Square in preparation for their own celebrations meant to counter Kiev's festivities.

(China Daily 08/25/2014 page12)