Ukraine's parliament on Thursday confirmed pro-Western Arseniy Yatsenyuk as premier to lead a new coalition government, while fresh attacks in the east provided a reminder of the steep challenges ahead. In a widely expected move, the Verkhovna Rada parliament backed Arseniy Yatsenyuk to remain as prime minister in its first sitting since pro-European parties won an overwhelming majority at polls in October.
Yatsenyuk - a bespectacled economic liberal who has held the position since the toppling of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in February - admitted the new government faced a mammoth task to try to drag his ex-Soviet nation back from the brink of collapse. "On our shoulders rests the weight of historical responsibility - to preserve the state and win our independence," Yatsenyuk told lawmakers ahead of the vote, in which he won the backing of 341 deputies out of 390.
"The country is at war and the people are in trouble." His confirmation came as the military said four more civilians - including a 12-year-old child - had been killed in clashes in east Ukraine, where government forces are still engaged in daily fighting with pro-Russian separatist rebels. A patrol of three monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) also reported coming under fire from a rocket-propelled grenade and anti-aircraft gun as they were escorted by the Ukrainian military in the conflict zone Wednesday.
The RPG hit some 150 metres (yards) from the monitors' vehicle as it passed between two Ukrainian checkpoints near the town of Shumy while the anti-aircraft rounds hit just two to three metres away, the OSCE said in a statement. Although there were no injuries, the incident comes after the OSCE mission - which is monitoring a tattered September cease-fire between government forces and rebels - said last week that monitors were "deliberately" shot at for the first time by unidentified uniformed personnel.
Meanwhile, the European Union added five separatist groups and 13 individuals to a blacklist for their role in rebel elections this month in the east, which Kiev and Western countries have refused to recognise. The decision taken by the 28 EU ambassadors "responds to the separatist vote which undermined... the implementation of the Minsk protocol," a diplomatic source said, referring to the cease-fire deal signed in the Belarussian capital in September.
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