Good morning. Our lead story this morning: Peace talks in Berlin.
Talks to assess the implementation of a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine are due to take place in Berlin on April 13.
The meeting brings together German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.
The conflict between Russian-backed rebels and government troops in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 6,000 people since April 2014
The cease-fire agreement brokered by the German and French leaders in the Belarusian capital of Minsk in February has reduced hostilities, but violations are reported regularly.
Under the truce, fighting was supposed to stop and heavy weapons were to be pulled back from the front line.
Responsibility for verifying the cease-fire lies with monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Ahead of the Berlin talks, Steinmeier urged Moscow and Kyiv to move ahead with implementation of the Minsk deal, which also sets out steps to regulate relations between Kyiv and rebel-held parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces and to help them recover from a year of fighting.
Progress, But 'Not Enough'
Prospects for a settlement are clouded by disputes over those aspects of the deal.
"We expect both Moscow and Kyiv to seize the central issue of the implementation of the next phase of Minsk," Steinmeier said in an interview with the Die Welt newspaper.
The next phase foresees "the preparation of local elections in the areas occupied by the separatists, but also humanitarian access and reconstruction in eastern Ukraine," Steinmeier said.
Steinmeier said OSCE observers were making progress, "but it is not enough."
He also point to the "well advanced withdrawal of heavy weapons."
Steinmeier's largely upbeat assessment was echoed recently by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius who said on April 9 that "some progress" has been achieved on the ground despite cease-fire violations.
However, an unnamed NATO official told another newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on April 12 that Russia was still supplying troops and weapons to the separatists in Ukraine, in violation of the Minsk accords.
"We have noticed again support for the separatists, with weapons, troops and training. Russia is still sending troops and arms from one side of the open border with Ukraine to the other," the Germany daily quoted the official as saying.
On April 10, the Ukrainian military accused the rebels of intensifying attacks, especially around the airport in the rebel-held city of Donetsk.
The military said the rebels were using heavy weapons, which are supposed to have been withdrawn from the front line.
Russia says it will stop gas transit via Ukraine -- after 2019, Reuters reports:
Russia does not plan to renew the contract for the natural gas transit via Ukraine after 2019, Russia's Minister of Energy Novak said on Monday at the Valdai Club meeting.
The South Stream was not the first project to contract the Russian gas transit via Ukraine, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said earlier.
"The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline was the first alternative project for Russia's gas supplies via the territory of Ukraine," Miller said. It was followed by the Blue Stream project also bypassing Ukraine as a transit nation, he added.
European capacities for the gas offtake from the Turkish Stream gas pipeline substituting South Stream should be ready by 2019, the head of Gazprom said.
From RFE/RL's News Desk:
By RFE/RL's Russian Service
A retired Russian naval officer in St. Petersburg is on trial on charges of spying for Ukraine.
The St. Petersburg city prosecutor’s office said on April 13 that retired Captain Vladislav Nikolsky, 69, is accused of giving unidentified Ukrainians access to material relating to Russian military vessels -- some of it classified.
Investigators said he did so by posting documents online and giving the Ukrainians login IDs and passwords needed to gain access.
They said some of the material posted by Nikolsky while he was employed by the Scientific Research Institute of Ship and Weaponry Production of Russia's Armed Forces and Fleet in 2011 was classified.
Nikolsky faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted.
With reporting by fontanka.ru
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.
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.