Russian Federation says Ukraine preparing new offensive against separatists

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday accused the Ukrainian government in Kiev of derailing the recent talks on withdrawal.

Kiev, however, says sustained attacks near the Ukrainian-held city of Mariupol, an economically important port for the Donbas region on the Sea of Azov coast, suggest that rebels are also making a sustained push west. From Sunday evening into Monday morning, the Ukrainians said their forces were attacked more than 140 times in positions around Mariupol.

But the escalation in fighting has drawn expressions of concern from Western governments, which regard the ceasefire and tentative peace agreement worked out in Minsk, Belarus, in February as still the best chance of ending the rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

The news service of the self-styled rebel “Donetsk People’s Republic” said government artillery had shelled the outskirts of Donetsk, killing two civilians, and the city of Horlivka, where three civilians died.

Meanwhile pro-Moscow separatist officials reported the deaths of four civilians in overnight bombardments, three of them in the city of Donetsk.

Kolesnyk added that six more civilians were wounded and one man was killed in a Kiev-controlled village close to the rebels’ de facto capital Donetsk.

“On one street there were five houses which were really badly damaged by shell fragments. In the direction of Donetsk and Mariupol, the enemy actively used heavy weapons, including non-rocket and rocket artillery”, Lysenko told a media briefing.

Lavrov said that Ukraine and the pro-Russian rebels had been negotiating for a withdrawal of weapons away from the area, including demilitarisation of the town of Shyrokyne, which is near Mariupol and has seen intense fighting.

“We’re alarmed by the developments in recent days, which very strongly remind us of preparations for another round of combat operations”, he said.

“The situation in eastern Ukraine is explosive”, Berlin’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a German newspaper on Sunday.

More than 6,800 people have been killed and around 17,100 others wounded since the confrontation started in April 2014 in eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko called Putin’s visit to Crimea “a continuation of the plan to escalate the situation” as Ukraine prepares to mark its Independence Day on August 24.