Fierce clashes erupt in Ukraine

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the gravity of the situation in eastern Ukraine is escalating, as armed aggressions between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian militias have intensified in the recent days.

Ukrainian defence spokesperson Andriy Lysenko said in a press briefing on Monday that the military lost two servicemen, with seven wounded, over the last 24 hours in the war-torn Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Volodymyr Kolesnyk, a spokesman for the local health department, told AFP that two civilians were killed in overnight shelling northeast of Mariupol.

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

The heightened fighting also comes as Kiev accuses Russia of spurring new military activity in eastern Ukraine and along the Ukrainian border.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the chief of the regime’s National Security and Defense Council, who was in the Donbass region this week, claimed that the Ukrainian military logged 153 attacks by the separatists overnight, representing “a black record” since a truce was sealed in February.

Regional police said at least two people were killed when rebels shelled the town of Sartan. Moscow denies it is financing and supporting the rebels.

“On one street there were five houses which had been really badly damaged by shell fragments”.

Ukraine’s 16-month conflict, calmed by a wobbly cease-fire, has threatened to boil over again in recent days as the warring factions bicker over how to implement the peace agreement.

Germany’s foreign minister said the situation was explosive and he urged both parties in the conflict to come together quickly to prevent a spiral in violence.

Both the government in Kiev and leaders of the separatist eastern rebels have tried to lay the blame at the other side’s feet.

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Russia-occupied Crimea Monday, to pay a three-day visit aimed at developing the peninsula and promoting tourism there.

Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko called Mr Putin’s visit “a challenge to the civilised world”.

At the end of last month a senior UN official, Cecile Pouilly, said nearly 7,000 people had been killed in eastern Ukraine since fighting erupted there in mid-April 2014.