Russian Federation Ukraine News: Amid Escalating Fears Of War, Lavrov Presses Germany

But Monday’s deaths came from strikes across the warzone.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is hosting talks with France’s President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko on Monday, and analysts said the conspicuous absence of Putin underlined that relations were deteriorating as new violence flares in eastern Ukraine.

The latest fighting concentrated on the Ukrainian-held city of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, and the separatist-held town of Horlivka, north east of Donetsk.

“We’re anxious about events of the recent days, which look very much like preparation for fresh hostilities”, he said.

For its part, Ukraine says that a Russian “terrorist attack” used artillery to fire on civilian homes in villages on the outskirts of Mariupol in south-east Ukraine in the small hours of Monday morning, killing three civilians and two soldiers. “It was like that in January of this year”.

Putin criticized his Ukrainian counterpart for appointing foreign specialists and advisers to key government posts, such as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who became governor of Ukraine’s southern Odessa region in May. The single day death toll is the highest in over a month as both sides accuse each other of gearing up for an onslaught that would finish off an already-tattered February truce.

Seven were civilians and two were government soldiers, reports said.

Ukrainian government spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the rebels had fired howitzers and mortars not only at Shyrokyne, but also at Starohnativka and Hranitne, north of Mariupol.

“A person who makes such statements is concerned more with sustaining Russophobia in the West, thereby distracting from an inability to fulfill what he signed up for”, Lavrov said, as reported by Russian Federation Today.

The Ukrainian Security and Defense Council also reported two troops killed and six injured overnight. But Russian Federation supports the separatist cause and has said it is using its influence over the rebels to push for peace in the region.

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

A Ukrainian serviceman examine a destroyed house after shelling between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian seperatists in the town of Zolote on Sunday.