KIEV: Ukrainian government troops and separatists said their forces were complying with an agreed “Day of Silence” in Ukraine’s war-torn east yesterday, marking an attempt to forge an effective ceasefire which may lead to a new round of peace talks.
In a further step towards normalisation, Russia resumed shipments of natural gas to Ukraine on Tuesday, shut off for six months under a dispute over price and debt that ran parallel to the war waged by pro-Moscow separatists in Ukraine’s east.
Kiev’s military, announcing a suspension of combat operations from 10am, said troops had recorded six violations by the rebels, while six Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in the 24 hours before the truce came into force. The separatists said the ceasefire was, for the moment, holding.
The Ukrainians see the Day of Silence as a litmus test of Russian-backed separatists’ readiness to reinforce a September ceasefire which has been regularly breached with almost daily deaths among government forces, rebels and civilians.
Fighting in the past few weeks has been intense around the international airport in the city of Donetsk, the main separatist stronghold. The rebels are trying to wrest the ruins of the airport from government control.
If the truce holds on Tuesday, it could improve prospects of a new round of peace talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk involving Russia, Ukraine and the separatists under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Talks by that “contact group” in Minsk in early September led to a 12-point blueprint for peace, including a ceasefire.
Since then, separatists have defied Kiev by holding elections for officials. Ukraine accuses Russia of sending more troops and weapons to aid the rebels.
“We have declared a Day of Silence three times in the past. This is the fourth time. One hundred and ninety-two people have been killed since September 5,” army chief of staff Viktor Muzhenko told journalists in Kiev.
Moscow, which denies its troops are fighting in Ukraine although scores of them have died there, says Ukraine has violated the Minsk deal by continuing to fight.
In Donetsk, rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko said he had ordered his forces to cease firing from 10am and only to respond if attacked. “The ceasefire for the moment is being observed,” he said.
The United Nations says more than 4,300 people have been killed in eight months of conflict which began after a Russian-backed president was ousted by street protests in February.
Russia has annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and given support to separatists in the east, driving relations between Moscow and the West to the lowest since the Cold War.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov confirmed that a meeting of the contact group was planned in coming days, but said an easing of tensions in eastern Ukraine was still “a long way off”.
The restoration of flows of gas from Russia, after an upfront $378m payment by Kiev for supplies this month, brings temporary relief to the national power grid short of coal and under further pressure from sudden freezing temperatures.
Reuters
