Ukraine’s Prime Minister told government forces to remain on full battle alert yesterday as fighting in the rebel-held eastern city of Donetsk killed at least two civilians and further strained a ceasefire with Russian-backed separatists.
“Russia definitely will not give us either peace or stability. It is not their goal. So I am asking the defence minister for full battle readiness,” Arseny Yatseniuk, who is emerging as a policy ‘hawk’ in President Petro Poroshenko’s leadership, told a government meeting.
Russia definitely will not give us either peace or stability
The pro-Western Poroshenko, who will be looking for US support for his strategy in handling the separatist rebellions and Russia when he addresses the US Congress today, called the ceasefire on September 5 after heavy battlefield losses which Kiev ascribes to Russian military intervention on behalf of the rebels.
Moscow denies its armed forces are involved in the fighting despite what Kiev and Western governments say is undeniable proof. Russia’s objection to Kiev’s pro-Europe course since the ousting of the Moscow-backed president Viktor Yanukovych by street protests in February lies at the core of the crisis over Ukraine which has become the worst Russia-West confrontation since the Cold War.
Speaking at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the ceasefire in Ukraine was holding and that the frequency of violations was likely to decrease.
“Our evaluation and the evaluation of our colleagues from the European Union is that the ceasefire still remains in place,” Lavrov said. He insisted that Ukrainian troops were behind violations.
The shaky ceasefire is part of Poroshenko’s wider plan to end a conflict which has killed more than 3,000 civilians and which Yatseniuk said yesterday was costing the country 80 million hryvnia ($6 million) a day.
Crucially, his plan includes a politically-risky offer of temporary and limited self-rule, within a united Ukraine, to separatist-held areas in the east, a move designed to blunt an independence drive threatening to break up the ex-Soviet country.