Klimkin sceptical over truce
TOKYO: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin yesterday cast doubt on hopes that a UN-backed truce with pro-Russian rebels will stick, as he called for an expansion of international monitoring.
“The situation on the ground is very difficult and tense despite a declared ceasefire. We still have many shells thrown by terrorists in eastern Ukraine,” Mr Klimkin told reporters in Tokyo.
“There was always a problem of lack of trust in relations between Ukraine and Russia ... we can’t rely on any kinds of agreements between us and Russians.
“And exactly because of that we need [a] consistent position of the whole international community for defending Ukraine peace and Ukrainian territorial sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Mr Klimkin — who is in Japan for meetings with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his counterpart Fumio Kishida — made the comments a day after the US and Russian foreign ministers John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov expressed cautious optimism following talks in Geneva.
Their meeting was part of efforts to end the fighting in Ukraine, where the UN says more than 6,000 people have died in less than a year.
Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov both said a February 15 ceasefire was on the right track, despite repeated breaches.
Ukraine’s army said yesterday that three soldiers had been killed but the ceasefire was still broadly holding.
Both sides have begun to pull back some heavy weaponry from the frontline, but monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe have said it is too early to confirm a full pullback.
“What we need is, of course, at least a minor confidence and it could be provided by stopping any kind of shelling ... and clear monitoring and verification by the OSCE monitoring mission,” Mr Klimkin said yesterday.
“We’ve been working on an additional stabilisation component — it could be a UN mission, it could be a EU mission or [both] of them.”