Ukraine-Russia poised to strike truce deal
A Pro-Russian separatist holds a destroyed weapon on a road in the village of Novokaterinovka, some 50 km southeast of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, on September 4. AFP Photo/Anatolii Boiko
Kyiv [AFP]
Ukraine is poised to strike a Kremlin-backed ceasefire deal with rebel leaders after five months of a conflict that has inflamed East-West tensions.
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said on Thursday the peace blueprint would be signed on Friday at a meeting in Minsk brokered by the pan-European security body the OSCE.
The leaders of two pro-Russian rebel regions in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland also said they were ready to issue orders to silence the guns once a deal is done.
The push for peace follows a dramatic surge in tensions after NATO reported that Russia had secretly sent in troops and heavy weapons to support the insurgents in a new counter-offensive that has seen Kyiv’s troops lose control of large areas of the southeast.
But in a sign of the future hurdles an agreement would face, AFP correspondents reported explosions on the outskirts of the key southeastern port city of Mariupol as Ukrainian forces battled separatist gunmen.
‘Tomorrow in Minsk a document will be signed providing for the gradual introduction of the Ukrainian peace plan,’ Poroshenko said on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Wales.
‘It is very important that the first element provides for a ceasefire,’ he said.
Representatives of Kyiv, Moscow, the separatist rebels and the OSCE are due to stage their second meeting of the week the Belarussian capital on Friday.
The heads of the self-declared ‘People’s Republics’ of Donetsk and Lugansk also issued a joint statement saying they were ‘ready to issue a ceasefire order if an agreement is reached and the Ukrainian representatives sign the political settlement plan.’
Russian president Vladimir Putin had announced on Wednesday a seven-point blueprint aimed at halting the fighting after telephone talks with Poroshenko.
Analysts had said the timing of Putin’s announcement appeared designed to head off possible new Western retaliatory measures over Russia’s actions in the former Soviet state, which has sent alarm bells ringing in Europe and the US.
Moscow has vehemently denied any direct involvement in the conflict, and on Thursday foreign minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of actually undermining peace efforts.
His comments appeared to be linked to plans by Ukraine’s pro-Western leaders to launch a renewed bid for membership of NATO, taking it further outside Moscow’s orbit.
And in a move likely to further infuriate the Kremlin, Poroshenko said that NATO leaders would back stronger military support for Kyiv at their summit in Wales.
‘We need people to stop dying,’ said Poroshenko, whose unilateral ceasefire in June collapsed in a matter of days.
After weeks of being besieged by Ukrainian forces, the rebels suddenly appeared to gain the upper hand, advancing towards the southeast in what some saw as a Moscow-backed land grab to link Russia with annexed Crimea.
And the fighting was continuing on the ground on Thursday near the Mariupol, an important industrial port on the Sea of Azov.
A top pro-Kyiv official in Donetsk said Ukrainian forces had repelled a small rebel ‘reconnaissance mission’ outside Mariupol and destroyed four tanks, but that the situation inside the city itself remained calm.