Troops prepare for pullback in Ukraine
Ukraine was waiting to see if a Russian-backed truce lasted through Sunday before starting to withdraw forces from a frontline against pro-Moscow separatist rebels stretching across the war-torn east.
The military reported no casualties but there were more than a dozen overnight attacks by pro-Russian gunmen who refused to accept Kyiv’s decision to seek a closer alliance with the West.
National Security and Defence Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said attempts to convince the militias to halt fire “are achieving certain progress”.
He blamed the raids “on insubordinate groups” and not the rebel commanders or Russia.
The insurgency had resulted in five months of bloodshed that has killed 3200 people.
But retaliatory Western sanctions on Russia and the drain of ceaseless warfare on Ukraine’s economy and morale brought the sides together for negotiations in early September that have since produced a broad truce and political settlement plan.
At its heart lies an agreement to establish a buffer zone 30km wide between rebel and government forces across the economically vital but shattered rustbelt nestled near Ukraine’s Russian frontier.
The guerrillas would then be granted temporary control of land from which they, with alleged help from Russia, repelled Ukraine’s outdated armed forces.
The ceasefire was meant to take effect last weekend as a prerequisite to any global deal. Yet low-scale clashes continued and the mooted pullback was not enforced.
A ray of hope glimmered on Friday when top Russian and Ukrainian commanders gathered for the first time near the rebel stronghold of Donetsk to pore over maps and set terms under which both sides could trust each other enough to order a retreat.
Russia’s state media portrayed the meeting as Kyiv’s first recognition of an actual international border being established across the industrialised Lugansk and Donetsk provinces.
Ukraine in turn stressed that the Russians promised to impress on the militias the need to respect the truce — a rare recognition by Moscow of its sway over the separatists.
“We are going to convince (the rebels), use reason with them. That is the most important thing,” the deputy commander of Russia’s ground forces, Aleksander Lentsov, told Ukrainian television after the meeting.
The Ukrainian defence ministry said at least 24 hours of uninterrupted calm across the war zone could prompt a gradual withdrawal from the front on Sunday night.
But the self-proclaimed heads of the rebel bastions of Lugansk and Donetsk have remained conspicuously silent.