Foreign ministers meet in Berlin to discuss Ukraine conflict
Kiev/Berlin (dpa) - The foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany were meeting Monday in Berlin to review the progress made in implementing the Ukraine peace deal reached some two months ago.
A "degree of calm" had been achieved in eastern Ukraine but it was "too early to give the all clear," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said before the talks got underway.
The ministers are to discuss improving humanitarian supply lines into contested areas, restarting prisoner exchanges and preparing for the local elections that were agreed to under the deal signed in Belarus.
The meeting follows fresh violence between the pro-Russian rebels and government troops.
Four separatists were injured in fighting with government forces around Donetsk airport and the region east of the port city of Mariupol, separatist spokesman Eduard Basurin said according to news reports.
The Ukrainian Security Council said that one soldier was killed and six were injured during the past 24 hours.
Speaking in Kiev, Council spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk accused the separatists of violating the ceasefire by attacking government positions with heavy artillery.
The separatists carried out more than 20 attacks with large caliber weapons and tanks, Motuzyanyk said according to an official transcript.
Basurin accused the Ukrainian military of violating the ceasefire with "provocative attacks."
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which monitors the ceasefire, expressed dismay at the violence.
The organization's chief monitor in Ukraine, Ertugrul Apakan, called upon all sides to exercise restraint.
Violence escalates in east Ukraine ahead of talks
KIEV, April 13 (Reuters) -- Ukraine's military accused pro-Russian rebels on Monday of using heavy weapons that were meant to have been withdrawn under a ceasefire deal, after one Ukrainian serviceman was killed and six wounded in rebel-held territories.
With fighting intensifying once more, the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany were due to meet in Berlin later on Monday to discuss the next steps in implementing a ceasefire agreement signed in the Belarussian capital Minsk in February.
"The rebels have not stopped firing at Ukrainian positions ... Over the past day, the enemy has used weapons banned under the Minsk agreements," Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksandr Motuzyanyk said in a televised briefing.
Under the deal, weapons bigger than 100 mm calibre, including heavy artillery and powerful rocket systems, are meant to have been withdrawn from the front line.
Motuzyanyk said rebels had fired at government troops multiple times with 120-122 mm weapons.
Meanwhile separatist officials accused government troops of firing tank and artillery rounds repeatedly at rebel positions, the separatist news agency DAN reported.
It also quoted senior rebel commander Eduard Basurin as saying two local journalists had been wounded by Ukrainian firing around Pisky, near the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is monitoring the implementation of the ceasefire deal, also reported a sharp spike in hostilities over the weekend.
Fighting picks up in war-torn eastern Ukraine
DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) -- Fighting has picked up in eastern Ukraine after more than a month of relative calm, as diplomats gathered in Berlin on Monday to discuss the country's crisis.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Sunday that its mission observed an intense clash with the use of tanks and heavy artillery as well as grenade launchers and mortars in the north of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
On Sunday alone, the OSCE recorded at least 1,166 explosions, caused mainly by artillery and mortar shell strikes in northern Donetsk as well as on its outskirts including the airport, now obliterated by fighting.
The OSCE also reported intense mortar fire outside the village of Shyrokyne, by the Azov Sea, but said its representatives were repeatedly barred from accessing the village on Sunday.
Mortar fire was also heard at night and in the morning on Monday in central Donetsk.
Rebel officials as well as Ukrainian and Russian colonels in charge of monitoring the cease-fire went early Monday afternoon to the northern outskirts of Donetsk, a scene of heavy fighting Sunday night.
The rebels told reporters they took captive a Ukrainian soldier and showed the body of another Ukrainian soldier. Intermittent shelling and exchanges of machine gun fire were heard from what appeared to be half a mile from the scene.
A rebel with the nom de guerre Monakh told The Associated Press that one rebel has been killed and five more injured in fighting in the north of Donetsk.