Ukraine rebels breach ceasefire at encircled town
DONETSK: Pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine disavowed a new truce on Sunday hours after it took effect saying it did not apply to the town of Debaltseve where most fighting has taken place in recent weeks.
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko warned that the peace process was already “threatened” by the separatists’ encirclement of Debaltseve.
Ukraine’s military said rebels were still trying to occupy Chornuhine, some 4km from Debaltseve, and were also moving heavy weaponry towards a village close to the key Kiev-held port city of Mariupol.
Guns fell abruptly silent at midnight across much of eastern Ukraine in line with the ceasefire agreement, reached after a week of diplomacy led by France and Germany. But pro-Russian rebels announced they would not observe the truce at Debaltseve, where Ukrainian army forces were encircled.
Two civilians were killed by rebel rocket fire shortly after the start of the ceasefire, a Kiev official said. An elderly man and woman died after Grad missiles hit the town of Popasna in the Lugansk region some 20 minutes after the truce came into force.
The firing allegedly came from an area that Kiev says is under the command of a renegade group of Cossack fighters who insist they will not obey rebel leaders’ commands to stop firing.
The ceasefire is the first step in a last-ditch peace plan agreed Thursday by Kiev and pro-Russian rebels after marathon talks in Minsk.
Elsewhere across the region, ILYA KIVA, deputy regional police chief Ukraine’s military said its forces had come under fire 60 times.
The situation remained most fraught around the key government-held town of Debaltseve, where pro-Russian rebels battled fiercely to surround Ukranian forces in the hours leading up to the truce.
The sound of isolated explosions could be heard in the distance but it was insignificant compared to before the ceasefire.
“At this moment, just now, there are no shellings, and the night was quiet. But an hour and a half ago there was much shooting,” a soldier told AFP.
Deputy regional police chief Ilya Kiva said that firing in Debaltseve and the village of Chornuhine had dropped off but not stopped entirely.
“If before they were shooting at us with Grads [rockets] every 37 seconds then, now they’re firing mortars but with big intervals between,” Kiva said.
“We hope that it will just take a bit of time before we get a full ceasefire. It is not an immediate process.” The latest peace deal is seen as the best hope to stop fighting that has killed over 5,480 people since April but scepticism is high after previous truces collapsed.