Rival parades underscore deep divide in Ukraine

As armoured vehicles rumbled through downtown Kiev in an ostentatious celebration of Ukraine’s independence, pro-Russian rebels who are battling government forces in the east paraded captured soldiers down the besieged streets of Donetsk and displayed charred wreckages of destroyed Ukrainian tanks.

Yesterday’s rival demonstrations on Ukraine’s 23rd anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union underscored the bitter divide in a country already five months into warfare and making plans for potentially years more of tensions.

President Petro Poroshenko, addressing a highly militarised independence rally in Kiev, vowed to defeat the rebels and safeguard Ukraine’s border with Russia by sharply raising defence spending for the coming three years. He warned that Ukraine too often in history had been caught by surprise from eastern invasions.

“It is clear that in the foreseeable future there will always, unfortunately, be the threat of war,” Poroshenko said. “And we not only have to learn to live with that. We must always be prepared to defend our independence.”

The rebels responded with their own show of strength in their stronghold of Donetsk, parading dozens of captured soldiers through the streets as bystanders threw eggs and bottles at them.

In Kiev more than 20,000 people, many waving the country’s blue and yellow flags or donning traditional embroidered shirts, watched the parade on Kiev’s Independence Square, where months of protests earlier this year ended in the ousting of the country’s former pro-Russian president.

Poroshenko said he would raise military spending by 40bn hryvnia (€2.27bn) through 2017, an effective 50% increase.

Ukrainian military leaders have sought more resources as they face a protracted fight against separatists.