After more than four months of bloodshed, a ceasefire in Ukraine’s rebellious east largely held back fighting on Saturday, but appeared fragile as both sides of the conflict claimed the others had violated the agreement.
A statement from Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s appeared to make a glancing reference to the ceasefire’s tentativeness, saying said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed steps “for giving the ceasefire a stable character” in a telephone conversation on Saturday.
But, it said, both leaders assessed the ceasefire as having been “fulfilled as a whole.”
Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security Council, told reporters that rebels had fired at Ukrainian forces on 10 occasions after the ceasefire was to take effect, but all the incidents he detailed were on Friday night.
Alexander Zakharchenko, the top separatist leader from Donetsk, told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti that the ceasefire had been violated with two rounds of shelling in the town of Amvrosiivka, about 50 km southeast of Donetsk.
“At this time the ceasefire agreement is not being fully observed,” he said. He didn’t say when the supposed breach was to have occurred.
Ukraine, Russia and the Kremlin-backed separatists signed the ceasefire deal on Friday in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, in an effort to end more than four months of fighting in the region. Western leaders voiced scepticism over Russia’s commitment to the truce. Both the U.S. and the European Union have prepared even tougher sanctions on Moscow, and President Obama stressed that the most effective way to ensure the ceasefire’s success was to move ahead with those measures and maintain pressure on Russia.
In a statement published online Saturday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned further EU sanctions and promised that “there will undoubtedly be a reaction from our side” to any new measures.
In August, Russia passed a sweeping ban on meat, fruit, vegetables, and dairy product imports from the EU, the U.S. and a host of other countries who imposed sanctions on Russia.
