The peace talks clearly did not go well. But the bloodshed rages on.
At least six Ukrainian servicemen were killed during the past 24 hours and 12 injured as a fresh round a diplomatic talks failed to secure a lasting cease-fire in Ukraine’s still smoldering standoff with Russian-backed separatists controlling breakaway eastern regions.
News of the mounting bloodshed in a one-year conflict that has claimed more than 6,000 lives came as Pavlo Klimkin, Ukraine’s foreign minister, described late night talks that started on April 13 with counterparts from Russia, Germany and France as “very tough.”
Officials said all sides called for a withdrawal from front lines of tanks, mortars and lower caliber – below 100 millimeter – weapons, but uncertainty loomed if the steps and broader conditions called for in the February Minsk agreements would be adhered to by the warring parties.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who hosted the meeting, insisted afterward that the parties had no alternative but to abide by agreements forged in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in February and September.
“Everyone knows that we have a long path ahead of us … but we’re going to do everything we can to continue this process,” Steinmeier told reporters after the talks.
There was no progress during the talks towards achieving Ukraine’s stated goal of bringing United Nations or European Union peacekeepers to help the cease-fire hold. Such an outcome is adamantly opposed by Russia which, despite mounting evidence, continues to deny that it engineered the separatist conflict as proxy war against Ukraine, and has intervened with direct participation of regular troops and advanced weaponry.
Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s ambassador at-large, described results from the Berlin talks as not optimistic enough, but still “the only possible way to influence Russia and its fighters to stick to Minsk agreements.” He said that “Ukraine is eager to keep moving forward, even if it means taking even a little step towards peace.”
Meanwhile, Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of Donetsk-based separatists accused Kyiv of undermining the peace process, insisting that Kyiv’s forces had fueled the recent upsurge in fighting.
“Kyiv has blatantly cheated the leaders of the Normandy group, Ukrainians and the international community, because what Ukrainian soldiers (are doing in the east) does not go in line with Minsk agreements,” Zakharchenko said on April 14.
The claim was described by Kuleba as a distraction from battlefield reality, in which Russia continues its arms build up to help separatist fighters wage fresh, probing advances on Ukrainian positions.
“It’s not Ukraine stockpiling arms in the region, and firing upon Shyrokyne and Donetsk,” Kuleba said.
Kyiv’s version of events was once again backed up by US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, who accused Kremlin proxies of using heavy weapons that were meant to have been withdrawn under the Minsk-II cease-fire agreement.
“We know Russia established training areas in eastern Ukraine to train separatist fighters in gunnery and artillery firing,” he said in an April 14 Twitter posting.
Some experts believe Russian-backed separatists are on the verge of mounting a full-blown offensive to capture more territory, something they have repeatedly threatened to do.
Risk of such a scenario is increasing “especially as the ground dries out, and ‘offensive’ operations become easier,” said Timothy Ash, who heads emerging market research for Standard Bank in London.
Viacheslav Tseluiko, a military expert at the Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies, agrees.
“None of the sides is happy with the result (of the talks). That’s why we see escalation of the conflict now,” he said.
Ukrainian military officials said the main hotspots targeted with separatist attacks are villages and small towns on the outskirts of Donetsk, including Avdiyivka, strategically important as home to a key supplier production material used in the country’s vast steel industry.
Also facing heavy fire in past days was Shyrokyne, an eastern suburb of the southern port city of Mariupol, and northern front line regions stretching to the far-eastern separatist held stronghold of Luhansk.
As fears spread that fighting in the eastern Donbas could gather apace, concern also grew that subversive separatist groups were plotting to destabilize Ukrainian-government controlled Kharkiv, the largest city in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east.
Over the weekend, Ukraine’s Security Service, or SBU, detained at least 11 alleged members of a terrorist group in Ukraine’s second largest city. Officials claim that the suspects had vast stockpiles of weapons, including rocket-propelled grenade launchers and Kalashnikov rifles.
Officials said the group was coordinated by Yevheny Zhylin, head of the radical Russian Oplot group, whose members were have been active in the past as part of the hardcore pro-Russian separatist movements in Kharkiv and Donetsk.
