Ollie Carroll has been writing for The Independent about the cease-fire, or lack thereof, in eastern Ukraine:
The mercury stops at -30 and fierce winds whirl snow through the improvised campsite. Stuck out in frontline positions near Debaltsevo in the Donetsk region, the soldiers of Ukraine’s 128th mechanised brigade have observed the nature of Ukraine’s “ceasefire” at first hand. Their sunken, haunted stares, speak of its success.
“The politicians might call it whatever they want, but what is said in Kiev and what is happening on the ground are two very different things,” says Private Yury Trush, who has been stationed in Debaltsevo since September.
According to Private Trush, military activity has been relatively consistent throughout the ceasefire, with the exception of three weeks in late December, when things became “relatively calmer”. That ended abruptly on New Year’s Day, he said, when the region once again became subjected to regular shelling by mortars, rockets, and heavier artillery.
Debaltsevo, back under Kiev’s control since late July, is one of four or five key strategic points on the military map of eastern Ukraine. As an important transport hub for road and rail, Kiev has been keen to hold on to the town despite obvious geographical vulnerability – surrounded as it is by Russian-backed rebel forces to the west, east and south.
From day one, pro-Russian agitators have made threats to fully encircle and ambush the Ukrainian troops based there while the city and its environs have been among the most shelled of the conflict.
Approximately a thousand homes have been damaged or destroyed since July, and military and civilian deaths run into the mid-hundreds.
Developments over the past week have done much to dash immediate hopes for a political solution to the conflict that has dragged on since April. As Ukrainian authorities introduced wider restrictions on travel in and out of rebel-held territories, fighting in Donetsk resumed at levels not seen since September.
From Sunday night to Monday morning, Ukrainian military authorities recorded 63 separate attacks on their positions. Heavy shelling was also clearly audible in the regions adjacent to rebel-held Gorlovka and Yenakievo to the south-west.
Several new videos of military convoys moving in rebel-held territories have also appeared on social media in the past few days. One, filmed on Saturday, showed a column of at least 30 modern military vehicles travelling in the border town of Krasnodon in the Lugansk region.
Andrei, a resident of Gorlovka in the Donetsk region, told The Independent that several dozen new military vehicles had entered the city in the past week. Given the difficulty in accessing the city, it is impossible to verify the claims. Yesterday, Andrei Purgin, Deputy Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic declared that rebel forces had “returned to a phase of active military operations”, and it now seems probable that turbulent times await the region.
Read the entire article here
Good morning. We'll start the live blog today with this wrap up from our news desk on the talks in Germany last night:
The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France have failed to agree on terms for a summit later this week aimed at defusing the crisis in eastern Ukraine.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier made the announcement after four hours of talks in Berlin on January 12 with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin.
He said the meeting on January 12 had been a "very open exchange" but did not produce the results needed for the countries to go ahead with a meeting of leaders this week in Kazakhstan as originally proposed last month by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Steinmeier said representatives from their ministries would meet again soon to see if they could bridge differences.
"If there is progress made at that level in the coming days, then we are prepared to meet again next week and resume this discussion we began today," he told reporters.
In a joint statement, the four ministers also called on the contact group of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to meet to try to make progress on implementing a much-violated Ukraine peace deal drawn up in September in Minsk, including creating the "relevant conditions for an effective cease-fire."
If this is done, it would "pave the way to the preparation of a successful summit meeting" in Kazakhstan, they wrote.
Earlier, Lavrov restated Moscow's position that the Ukrainian government and pro-Russian separatists need to enter into a direct dialogue and discuss constitutional reforms.
"Without this it will be hard to reach an agreement," he said according to the Interfax news agency.
Over the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel had told Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin that a peace summit was pointless as long as the Minsk agreement was not respected, a position largely echoed by France.
The Berlin meeting came amid reports of fresh fighting in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian military said on January 12 that two soldiers had been injured during a rebel attempt overnight to storm the government-held airport in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
Ukraine's Security Council accused the separatists of deliberately undermining the proposed summit.
"They want to sabotage the cease-fire and present Ukraine as the offender," Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko told the Ukrainskaya Pravda news site.
Earlier, Moscow accused Kyiv of trying to seek a military solution to the conflict.
"We are checking information that the [Ukrainian] military is preparing another attempt to solve the problem by force. This would be a catastrophe," Lavrov said in Moscow.
More than 4,700 people have been killed since the conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine last April.
Kyiv and the West accuse Russia of fueling the crisis by supplying arms and fighters to the rebels, a charge the Kremlin strongly denies, despite evidence -- some provided by NATO -- to the contrary.
The European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on Russia over its alleged involvement in the conflict.
With reporting by dpa, AFP, AP and TASS
That concludes our live blogging for Monday, January 12.
And here's our wrap-up of the meeting, and everything else that was taking place that likely dimmed hopes for an early peace in Ukraine:
Berlin Peace Talks On Ukraine Fall Flat
AP wraps up the meeting:
The foreign ministers of Germany, Russia, Ukraine and France were unable to make enough progress in closed-door meetings Monday on the Ukrainian crisis to move ahead with a higher-level summit.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said their four-hour meeting was a "very open exchange" but did not produce the results needed for the countries to go ahead with a meeting of leaders this week in Kazakhstan.
He said representatives from their ministries would meet instead in the coming days to see if they could bridge differences, and raised the possibility that the foreign ministers could meet again after that.
In a joint statement, the four ministers also called on the contact group of Ukraine, Russia, and the OSCE to meet to try and make progress on implementing a much-violated Ukraine peace deal drawn up in September, including creating the "relevant conditions for an effective cease-fire."
After four hours of talks at a meeting tonight between the foreign ministers of France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine, participants apparently failed to reach a breakthrough that would allow for the leaders of those same countries to meet in Kazakhstan later this week for Ukraine peace talks.
From dpa:
The foreign ministers of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France failed to agree on a summit to solve the Ukraine conflict this week, German minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says.
The conditions for such a summit have not been met, he explains after four hours of talks in Berlin.
From Russia's TASS:
Differences of approaches towards the Ukrainian problem among the 'Normandy format' countries remain in place, Germany's Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier said on Monday.
He also said foreign ministers of the four countries -- Russia, Ukraine, Germany, and France -- would hold one more meeting next week.