Fighting in eastern Ukraine resumed on Tuesday, hours after President Petro Poroshenko declared an end to a ceasefire that had only been patchily observed.
Four people were killed and five injured when a shuttle bus was hit by gunfire in the city of Kramatorsk, the Donetsk region government reported without giving further details.
A leader of the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, Miroslav Rudenko, told Russia’s Interfax news agency that fighting had broken out in the city of Kramatorsk, the village of Karlivka, and at Donetsk’s airport.
Witnesses also told local media that a tank battle was ongoing in the area of Karlivka, a village northwest of Donetsk.
Ukrainian parliamentary speaker Oleksandr Turchynov said during the opening of the Verkhovna Rada, or legislature, in Kiev that government forces began attacking the rebels in the morning, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reported.
The Ukrainian Defence Ministry said Ukrainian forces “carried out strikes from the air and on land” on Tuesday morning against separatist positions in eastern Ukraine.
Military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkovsky said forces “opened artillery fire, carried out air strikes at the strategic points of the terrorists and places where they are concentrated,” the Interfax news agency reported.
Mr. Dmytrashkovsky said one service member was killed and 17 wounded over the past 24 hours in rebel attacks and an Su-25 attack aircraft was damaged.
Mr. Poroshenko said in a television address early on Tuesday that a 10-day ceasefire was over and that government troops would “go on the offensive and liberate our country.” He accused the rebels of not complying with the truce and undermining his peace plan with “criminal acts.” The Ukrainian President later informed French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry about his decision.
He told them that Kiev was ready to begin political negotiations only if basic items of his peace plan were implemented, including a bilateral ceasefire and reliable controls on the Ukrainian-Russian border, his office said.
However, a senior presidential aide said on Tuesday that a fresh round of talks with separatists was still on the table.
“I do not exclude that another session of the contact group will happen, not in eastern Ukraine, but in [the Belarusian capital] Minsk,” Iryna Herashchenko told reporters in Kiev according to Interfax Ukraine.
Russia accuses west of pressuring Ukraine Meanwhile, Russia has accused the West of influencing Ukraine’s decision not to renew a ceasefire in the country’s east.
“Kiev’s change of tack did not happen without outside pressure, in spite of the position of leading EU members,” the Foreign Ministry said.
It added that Kiev’s decision undermines “an important diplomatic initiative” brokered by Russia, France and Germany and calls for fresh efforts to renew negotiations.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of blackmailing France over the sale of warships to Russia.
“We know about the pressure that the U.S. is putting on France so that it does not sell Mistral-class warships to Russia. This amounts to blackmail,” Mr. Putin told an ambassadors’ meeting in Moscow.
EU preparing new sanctions The European Union is preparing new sanctions in response to developments in Ukraine, according to diplomats in Brussels, a day after an ultimatum for signs of progress expired.
E.U. ambassadors are due to meet again “in the coming days,” a diplomat said in Brussels on condition of anonymity, after they held talks on Tuesday to evaluate the situation.
