Page 14 - Donbas Area News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Whatever claim moscow makes over them. russian-backed separatists control about a third of the donbas area, but until now, no government, including russia, formally recognized those self-declared republics as independent. ukrainians refer to them as invaders and occupiers. they refuse to talk to their leaders directly. russia has always maintained it had no soldiers on the ground there, but the us.s. and nato says the kremlin supplies the separatists and embeds their own officers inside their ranks. it is in clear violation of international law? for more on this we're joined by lieutenant gene...

Reactors, you could have something that's just as bad as chernobyl was and could spew radioactive steam and other by-products, could spew it for hundreds of miles to the west. it would make parts of ukraine in that area, which is very valuable farmland virtually uninhabitable for generations, so it's a reckless, stupid military maneuver. >> you know, general, clarissa ward was showing us moments ago, reuters images of an apartment complex just completely blown apart and they're drone images, extraordinarily disturbing, you know, they looked like grosni, which i talked about in the past, russia...

The key movements that have taken place over the last 2a hours in terms of territory have been in the south. these are the russian troops that have moved up north from crimea towards mariupol, towards the east. yesterday evening, we had heard they had taken the town of berdiansk, it's a port town, population of about 100,000 people. and we believe they are now moving on to mariupol, which is an even bigger city on the sea of azov. so quite possibly in the next 2a hours or so, we could see mariupol surrounded and we could see the russian forces that are based in eastern ukraine here, in the don...

Firefight at the facility. so what's interesting about this is that it, apparently, and again, we don't know if there is, have been rockets or, you know, missiles in this area, but i mean that would appear to be tracer fire of relatively large caliber weapons so it looks like more of a ground fight at least at this time, on this camera. >> i can't, from the pictures, really, you know, interpret what's going on in the detail but i'm sure that as the night goes on, we'll learn more. >> yeah. i want to bring in our jim sciutto who is also here with me in lviv, i mean jim, this is obviously a very...

Much for the update. joining me for more on this, especially the region sam is talking about right now. cnn military analyst, retired major general james marks, great to see you. this is a map that we've been looking at for weeks now. the three sides of where russian troops have been positioned around ukraine. let's focus in on what is now considered the front lines. >> correct. >> this, the donbas region, this disputed territory where if vladimir putin, as he has ordered troops in, if they are moving in, this is where we would expect the fighting to happen but what does that fighting look lik...