States ‘are arming Ukraine’
“Agreements were reached on the provision of military advisers and supplies of modern armaments from the United States, France, Italy, Poland and Norway,” the aide, Yuri Lytsenko, said on his Facebook page.
Mr Poroshenko, whose armed forces are battling pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, attended the two-day summit in Newport that ended on Friday. Nato officials have said the alliance will not send weapons to Ukraine, which is not a member state, but they have also said individual allies may choose to do so. Russia is fiercely opposed to closer ties between Ukraine and Nato.
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Yesterday a woman died and at least four people were wounded when fighting flared in eastern Ukraine, jeopardising the ceasefire struck less than two days earlier between Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists.
The accord, brokered by envoys from Ukraine, the separatist leaders, Russia and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is part of a peace plan intended to end a five-month conflict that has killed nearly 3,000 people and caused the sharpest confrontation between Russia and the West since the Cold War a generation ago.
Shelling resumed near the port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov late on Saturday night, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin and Mr Poroshenko had agreed in a phone call that the truce was holding.
Fighting also broke out early on Sunday on the northern outskirts of rebel-held Donetsk, the region’s industrial hub. A reporter saw plumes of black smoke filling the sky near the airport, which has been in the hands of government forces.
“Listen to the sound of the ceasefire,” joked one armed rebel. “There’s a proper battle going on there.” Both sides insisted they were strictly observing the ceasefire and blamed their opponents for any violations. As far as I know, the Ukrainian side is not observing the ceasefire. We have wounded on our side at various points. We are observing the ceasefire,” Vladimir Antyufeyev, deputy premier of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, said.
Earlier, government forces said they had come under artillery fire east of Mariupol, a crucial port for Ukrainian steel exports. In the days before the ceasefire they had been trying to repel a big rebel offensive against the city.
The shelling in Mariupol claimed the first civilian casualty since the ceasefire began. Local officials confirmed a 33-year-old woman had died early on Sunday and said at least four other people had been wounded.
“They -terrorists, Russians – are trying to scare us. They have no respect for the ceasefire. They are lying all the time. They are people with no honour,” said Slavik, a Ukrainian soldier armed with a machine gun.
“We left this area the day before yesterday. Everyone saw us pulling out tanks in line with the agreement. We only left lightly armed people to man checkpoints and these monsters violated every word of the agreement,” he said.