BackUkraine shelling kills 4 after talks produce no breakthrough
Nine people were also wounded as Donetsk's natural gas grids were damaged and many buildings destroyed
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Kiev: Authorities in Donetsk said at least four people died in shelling after two days of talks between European and Russian leaders to shore up a truce failed to produce a breakthrough in the eastern Ukrainian conflict.
Nine people were also wounded as the city’s natural gas grids were damaged and many buildings destroyed, the local administration said on its website on Sunday. An attempt to storm Donestk’s airport was repelled, according to Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian leader Vladimir Putin sought during negotiations in Milan to bolster a six-week truce amid skirmishes between government troops and pro-Russian separatists. While no soldiers were killed in the past 24 hours, at least 13 were wounded, Lysenko told reporters in Kiev on Sunday.
“The situation in Donetsk remains tense," Lysenko said. Clashes between different gangs of rebels and shelling represent the “main threat for civilians" in areas outside government control, he said.
European leaders are concerned that the deadlock in eastern Ukraine risks becoming the kind of unresolved conflict that’s bedeviled several former Soviet states. These include Transnistria, a breakaway part of Moldova on Ukraine’s southwestern border that declared independence in 1990, and South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two separatist regions in Georgia. Russia has troops based in all three regions.
‘Real situation’
“I can’t yet see any breakthrough," Merkel told reporters in Milan. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said after the day’s first meeting that “some participants of this breakfast show a complete unwillingness to understand the real situation in the southeast of Ukraine."
Germany’s BND spy agency determined that pro-Russian rebels caused the July crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in eastern Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on Sunday, citing remarks by BND President Gerhard Schindler in a private session to lawmakers. All 298 people on board the plane were killed.
The European Union and the US, which imposed sanctions against Russian officials and companies after the March annexation of the Crimea peninsula, have accused Putin’s government of providing pro-Russian rebels with cash, weapons and fighters. The Kremlin denies any involvement in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Key issues
The sanctions are an attempt to force Russia to change its stance on key issues and take the West’s position, Russian foreign ministry Sergei Lavrov said in a television interview today. That thinking belongs in the past, he said, according to a transcript posted on the ministry’s website.
Putin, whose nation pipes about 15% of the EU’s gas needs through Ukraine, said last week that supplies to Europe would be reduced if the Ukrainian government siphoned off fuel for its own use. Ukraine has said it won’t take any gas bound for Europe and that it’s a reliable transit country.
Ukraine will have gas for the winter after agreeing to pay $385 per thousand cubic meters for fuel from Russia, Poroshenko said late on Saturday. The government may use loans from the International Monetary Fund or other financial organizations to pay for the purchases, he said.
The EU has been seeking to broker an interim deal between Putin and Poroshenko to avoid a repeat of supply cuts in 2006 and 2009. The next round of talks is scheduled to take place on 21 October. Bloomberg
Patrick Donahue, Ilya Arkhipov and Daryna Krasnolutska contributed to this story.
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