Ukraine’s 36-hour-old cease-fire came under pressure Monday as fighting blazed around a contested eastern city and elsewhere, with both sides warning the violence is too intense to begin pulling back heavy weapons as mandated by the agreement.
Officials said at least five Kiev soldiers had been killed since the cease-fire went into effect at midnight Saturday and accused the Russia-backed rebels of stepping up attacks with artillery, tanks and mortars, for a total of 118 strikes. Separatists said they had fired only in response to attacks by Kiev.
Fighting has subsided across most of the front, including the main cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, officials said, with only a few pockets of continuing violence.
But the continued battles around the strategic transport hub of Debaltseve and other scattered violence has added to doubts that the new deal brokered in the Belarusian capital of Minsk by France and Germany will end 10 months of conflict.
“We are ready for this [withdrawal], but the cease-fire has to take place first, and it hasn’t happened yet, unfortunately,” Ukrainian security spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told a briefing in Kiev.
Debaltseve has been the focus of attacks for days. Over the weekend, rebel officials said they considered the town part of their territory and wouldn’t observe the cease-fire there.
Monday, they called on Kiev’s forces to surrender their weapons and leave, but that offer was rejected. The local police chief reported that rebel shelling had destroyed the city’s police station early Monday morning.
At the last Ukrainian checkpoint on the road toward Debaltseve, heavy thuds of shelling could be heard in the distance, though local residents and soldiers said the intensity is less than before the cease-fire. Soldiers at the checkpoint rejected rebel claims that the units in Debaltseve were surrounded, saying that supplies are still getting in.
Scattered fighting was also reported to the south, near Mariupol, where Kiev’s forces in recent weeks had sought to push back separatist units.
Under the cease-fire deal, both sides are supposed to begin withdrawing artillery, missiles and other heavy weapons from the front lines starting at midnight Monday night. The deal gives the warring sides 14 days to complete the pullback.
But military spokesmen in Kiev on Monday said the fighting was too intense around Shirokyne, east of Mariupol, to allow preparations for pulling back weaponry. Eduard Basurin, a top rebel defense official, said the pullback would begin “only after a complete cease-fire,” according to the separatist news agency.
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“If the Ukrainian armed forces don’t stop shelling in violation of the Minsk agreements, the Donetsk People’s Republic militia won’t pull back its weapons,” Mr. Basurin said.
The two sides were expected to hold a videoconference later Monday, mediated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, to discuss implementation of the deal. Rebel leader Denis Pushilin told Russian news agencies Monday that Kiev had tightened controls at checkpoints leading into the rebel zones, a move he said “strengthened the economic blockade” and thus contradicted the Minsk agreements. There was no immediate response from Kiev to the charge.
The deal calls for restoring social and economic ties between Ukraine and rebel-held areas, including pensions and other payments.
On Sunday, OSCE officials said the cease-fire was being observed “overall,” although there were violations and rebels had refused the group’s monitors access to Debaltseve. The last cease-fire deal in the region, agreed to in September, never fully took hold and violence surged last month.
The European Union continued its pressure on the separatists and Russia, imposing an asset freeze and travel ban on 19 people and nine organizations, including Russia’s deputy minister of defense and Iosif Kobzon, a prominent Russian singer and lawmaker.
EU foreign ministers decided last week to go ahead with the sanctions move amid the surge in violence. However the names of the new sanctions target were only announced Monday as the sanctions took effect.
Russia’s foreign ministry denounced the sanctions as illegitimate and vowed to respond in kind. In a statement, the ministry said “these decisions look especially absurd against the background of the Minsk agreements.”
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