LONDON: British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday that Russia’s “illegal” actions in Ukraine had reached a new level and that any attempts by pro-Russian separatists to expand their territory would draw tougher Western sanctions against Moscow.
Kiev said on Monday that pro-Russian forces massing near Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol are continuing to attack government troop positions, fueling concerns for the fate of an internationally brokered cease-fire.
Continued hostilities there and elsewhere meant a pull-back of heavy weapons could not go ahead as agreed, Ukrainian officials said.
“As Ukrainian positions are still being fired upon there can be no talk yet of a withdrawal of arms,” military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov wrote in a statement on Facebook on Monday. Tensions were also high following a bomb blast Sunday in the normally peaceful eastern city of Kharkiv. In their latest toll, authorities said that three people had died in the “terrorist” attack.
A Ukrainian military commander, Col. Valentyn Fedichev, said Monday that, while the number of attacks had generally decreased across the conflict zone, troop positions were still fired on 27 times since Sunday. Two Ukrainian soldiers were killed and 10 wounded, he said.
Insurgent fighters “have not halted attempts to assault our positions in the town of Shyrokine and the Mariupol area,” Fedichev said.British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said during a visit to Estonia that, “from the experience of the last 10 to 12 days, the Russian engagement in the Minsk (truce) process is rather cynical.”
He expressed a “high degree of skepticism about a Russian commitment to achieving genuine peace in Ukraine on anything but terms unilaterally dictated from the Kremlin.”
Russia has already been hit by successive rounds of Western sanctions that are savaging its economy, which is headed for recession because of a collapse in oil prices. Up to now, the main compliance with the truce has been a prisoner swap conducted on Saturday.
The Ukrainian army and the rebels traded nearly 200 fighters seized during the fighting.
Some of the soldiers released had been taken in the rebel assault on Debaltseve. The insurgents said they were still holding hundreds of others taken during that battle
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