Trump ‘shares Kiev’s fears’

FRESH VIOLENCE FLARES IN UKRAINE

US President Donald Trump told Ukraine’s leader on Saturday he would work with Kiev and Moscow to try to end the bloodshed in the European Union’s backyard.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s first conversation with the US leader came during a sharp escalation in violence in the Russian-backed separatist east last week that has claimed 35 lives.

The former Soviet republic worries that Trump is seeking to build a friendship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Some analysts linked the escalation of the violence to this potential thaw in relations while others attributed it to more local issues.

Yet Poroshenko’s hope of the same US commitment to his impoverished country as the one seen under the Barack Obama administrations were dashed by a rather neutral statement from Trump.

“We will work with Ukraine, Russia and all other parties involved to help them restore peace along the border,” he said.

Poroshenko himself put a more positive spin on the high-profile conversation. His office said the “sides expressed deep apprehension about the escalation in violence and the deterioration of the humanitarian situation”.

It added that the two presidents “spoke in favour of energising dialogue at all levels with the new US administration”.

The talks follow Trump’s phone conversation with Putin on January 28 that both sides described as constructive.

The rebels agreed with Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday to sign up to calls for a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the flashpoint town of Avdiivka by yesterday.

The ceasefire demand has not halted the violence and so far there are few signs of the big guns being pulled back from around the Kiev-held town of 25 000 at the centre of the fighting.

Early Saturday passed relatively calmly in Avdiivka – just 5km north of the insurgent’s de facto capital of Donets.

But the call to withdraw heavy weapons was made under the coordination of mediators from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

It provided for the “withdrawal by February 5, 2017 into permanent storage sites of all weapons regulated by Minsk agreements [signed on February 2015] to the distances defined in them and beyond the respective lines”.– AFP