From our newsroom:
Reports from eastern Ukraine say artillery has pounded the Donetsk airport area.
Kyiv said the rebels started firing Grad rockets at Ukrainian positions at the airport on September 30.
But the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk said their forces opened fire after Ukrainian troops started shelling the city of Donetsk, which is in rebel hands.
The fighting comes despite a September 5 cease-fire agreement, which has been holding in most other areas.
On September 29, reports said seven Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a clash with rebels near the airport.
In the neighboring region of Luhansk on September 30, regional governor Hennadiy Moskal said Grad rocket fire by separatists killed several people in the town of Popasna.
The rebels denied firing the rockets.
Based on reporting by Interfax, dpa, and the BBC
Some very specific advice from the head of the Donetsk regional state administration that's worth a read. Of the Minsk protocol that produced the current cease-fire, he says:
[T]here is no stimulus for the parties to execute the agreements, and there is no mechanism by which execution of one point guarantees execution of the next. The documents do not provide the mechanisms for arbitrage and sanctions that force the sides to stick to the agreement.
But the main problem is that the parties do not have a mutual vision of the future of the Donbas region, and this is the key reason why the peace process gets so much criticism. And this is the case when a bad peace is no better than a war.
Here's Reuters video of Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin yesterday announcing the Russian criminal case against Ukraine's political and military leadership for what it regards as "genocide" against Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine and Western countries accuse Russia of stoking separatism in eastern Ukraine, and deploying troops and equipment there.
