Ukraine demands "unconditional peace" as war rages
DONETSK, Ukraine -- Fighting continued to rage in eastern Ukraine Wednesday killing five people at a bus station in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, as Western leaders confirmed that they would take part in crucial peace talks being held later in the day.
Steffen Seibert, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said both she and French President Francois Hollande would travel to the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to attend the four-way summit alongside their Russian and Ukrainian counterparts.
European leaders have warned in recent days that there is no guarantee a deal will be reached with Moscow, which the West says is fueling a separatist rising in eastern Ukraine with troops and arms. Germany and France have rushed to mediate after a recent uptick in violence in the region, where fighting has killed at least 5,300 people since April.
In Donetsk, rebel officials said that five people were killed and nine wounded at the scene of a shelling attack early Wednesday on a bus station, where an Associated Press reporter saw one body. Donetsk city officials said in a statement that three people had been killed in shelling overnight.
Officials in Kiev also said Wednesday that 19 troops had been killed and 78 wounded in a day of fighting in Debaltseve, a hotly contested transport hub in the region.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko posted a statement on his website saying that he had made an impromptu visit to the war-torn region early Wednesday. Poroshenko stopped in the city of Kramatorsk, some 30 miles from the nearest front line, where Kiev says 16 people were killed and 48 wounded in a rocket strike Tuesday.
"We demand an unconditional peace," Poroshenko said. "We demand a cease-fire, a withdrawal of all foreign troops, and closing of the border.... We will find a compromise within the country."
At a news conference in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that there was "notable progress" in the peace process, though he gave no details.
Lavrov said that the most important goal of the talks would be to implement a cease-fire, and that it would be impossible for Ukraine to re-establish its control over the border with Russia because Kiev had already "suffocated (eastern Ukraine) economically and socially, in parallel with an attempted military crackdown."
"In these conditions, to give away the Russian part of the border also would be to cut them (the rebels) off even from humanitarian help and allow them to be surrounded," Lavrov said.
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said early Wednesday that "quite a number of problems remain" in negotiations aimed at ending the fighting.
He said difficulties remain on the future of embattled eastern Ukraine, guarantees about the Ukraine-Russia border near the area, and the prospects of a possible cease-fire, weapons pullback and prisoner exchange.
Fabius said the aim of the talks is to win an accord, but "not just one on paper."