Civilians, soldiers die in east Ukraine fighting, Putin in Crimea

The rebel mouthpiece Donetsk News Agency said five people were killed in shelling overnight while Ukrainian officials reported two civilian deaths on their side.

Concerns over excess oil output intensified after Baker Hughes on Friday said that the number of rigs drilling for oil in the US rose for the fourth straight week. While a separatist website said three had been killed by government shelling in Gorlivka.

The clashes, near Mariupol in the southeast and at Horlivka, a rebel-held town, formed part of a resurgence in violence that further frayed a tenuous ceasefire and drove up tensions in Kiev in the run-up to celebrations for Independence Day.

“We’re concerned about the developments of recent days, which strongly resemble preparations for more fighting”, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists Monday in Moscow. “Another four have various injuries”, DAN quoted the separatist mayor of the town as saying. Two Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and seven wounded in attacks by separatists in the past 24 hours, Lysenko said.

Military escalation could happen at any moment if the parties involved don’t concentrate on the peace process, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier told his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, according to an interview with Bild am Sonntag published Sunday.

The violence came as both sides accused one another of using high-calibre artillery and multiple rocket launchers banned under the February Minsk ceasefire agreement, and a senior separatist leader warned that the region is “one step away from a return to full-scale military action”.

Ukraine accuses Russian Federation of having a major hand in the conflict which has killed more than 6,500 people since it started in April 2014.