Peace deal dead: Russia

Pro-Moscow rebels shot down two helicopter gunships Friday during an assault on the flashpoint Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, prompting a furious Russia to warn that the raid had destroyed a peace deal to defuse the crisis. Two Ukrainian servicemen were killed in the pre-dawn operation to wrest the eastern town from insurgents' control, authorities in Kiev said. Moscow said the raid was "leading Ukraine towards catastrophe" and warned that the operation had dealt a death blow to an accord struck in Geneva last month. That agreement had sought to head off military escalation in Ukraine, over which the East and West are locked in their worst confrontation since the end of the Cold War, according to AFP.