Ukraine presses offensive

Tough sanctions on Moscow still option: Merkel

Ukrainian troops backed by tanks and fighter-bombers pressed on Wednesday with a renewed offensive against pro-Kremlin insurgents that has drawn Russian ire but also vital US support.

The return of all-out fighting in Europe’s worst security crisis in nearly two decades set off a new international scramble to dampen hostilities in the strategic ex-Soviet state.

The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France began a hastily arranged meeting two days after Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko ripped up a 10-day truce which Kiev says the insurgents had repeatedly broken.

But Ukrainian leaders said their military operation was progressing with a resolve to stand up to what they see as a last-ditch Russian effort to halt their new westward drive.

“The armed forces and the National Guard are continuing an aggres- sive offensive against terrorists and criminals,” parliament speaker Oleksandr Turchynov told lawmakers.

“Our soldiers’ actions are sufficiently effective and productive,” he said in televised remarks.

The border guard service in Kiev said militias killed one Ukrainian soldier and wounded four others in separate mortar fire attacks along the Russian border.

It was the first casualty reported by Kiev in the second stage of the lowscale war. Regional officials on Tuesday had also confirmed the deaths of four civilians in a roadside attack on their bus.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel criticized Moscow on Wednesday for failing to engage on the peace plan announced by Poroshenko and said tougher economic sanctions against Russia were still an option.

“Regarding sanctions against Russia, we have so far reached level two and we cannot rule out having to go further,” Merkel said at a news conference with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

While Poroshenko came under attack from Russian President Vladimir Putin, the US rallied to his defense on Tuesday, with a State Department spokeswoman saying he “has a right to defend his country.”

An EU diplomat said Tuesday the EU was preparing new punitive measures that for the moment stopped short of an all-out restriction of the 28-nation bloc’s banks from working with their Russian counterparts.

But the source added that the EU was not yet ready to target entire sectors of Russia’s economy – a step now being weighed in Washington – and only preparing to extend its punitive measures “quantitatively and qualitatively.”