News.Kyiv.Me.

KYIV, Ukraine — Fighting raged in eastern Ukraine on Sunday as pro-Russia separatists used
artillery to try to dislodge government forces from a strategic rail hub after peace talks
collapsed.

Hopes of easing the situation evaporated on Saturday with Ukraine’s representative and
separatist envoys accusing each other of sabotaging negotiations.

“Fighting continues across all sections of the front line,” Kyiv military spokesman Volodymyr
Polyovy said in a briefing. He said 13 soldiers had been killed in the previous 24 hours.

Other Ukrainian authorities said at least 13 civilians also had been killed in attacks.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which took part in the talks in Minsk,
Belarus, along with envoys from Ukraine and Russia, said rebel delegates had not been ready to
discuss crucial points of a peace plan.

“In fact, they were not even prepared to discuss implementation of a cease-fire and withdrawal
of heavy weapons,” the organization said in a statement.

The organization said rebels instead had pushed for a revision of a cease-fire plan agreed to in
Minsk in September.

The terms of that 12-point protocol have been violated repeatedly, but Kyiv and foreign
governments see it as the only viable path to ending the nine-month-long conflict in which more
than 5,000 people have been killed.

The rebels rejected the security organization’s assessment, saying they were ready for dialogue
but unwilling to accept an “ultimatum” from Kyiv so long as government forces continued shelling
civilian areas, the separatist news service DAN quoted rebel envoy Denis Pushilin as saying.