German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande met Russian leader Vladimir Putin Friday in a frantic bid to avoid a further escalation of violence in east Ukraine. Ahead of the Moscow talks, Merkel played down hopes of a rapid end to surging fighting as she and Hollande try to convince Putin to sign up to a peace plan to stop the conflict.
"We know that it is completely open as to whether we'll succeed in achieving a cease-fire through these talks," Merkel told reporters in Berlin before taking the surprise initiative to Putin. Merkel and Hollande flew first to Kiev on Thursday, hoping for a quick halt to the bloodshed and to revive a widely flouted truce accord agreed in Minsk last September. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the biggest push yet to resolve the 10-month conflict raised "hope for a cease-fire".
Putin and the unsmiling European duo held the closed-door talks around a small round table in an ornate hall in the Kremlin with the media only allowed in briefly and no comments made. The tense visit is the first to Moscow for Merkel since the start of the Ukraine crisis while Hollande made a brief stopover there in December. As fears have soared of an escalation in the conflict and concern over possible divisions between the United States and Europe on whether to supply arms to Kiev, US Vice President Joe Biden said Ukraine was battling for survival in the face of escalating Russian military involvement.
"We, the US and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment," Biden said in Brussels. "Russia cannot be allowed to redraw the map of Europe." "President Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside, and he absolutely ignores every agreement his country has signed in the past," Biden said.
European Union officials said Thursday that the bloc will blacklist more Russian individuals over Ukraine, and it is hoped that the possibility that broader sanctions could be toughened up will encourage Russia to agree to a peace deal. Hollande said they were heading to Moscow to "seek a deal" with Putin - whom the West sees as the mastermind behind Ukraine's pro-Moscow rebellion - that would help end the crisis in the long-term. "Everyone is aware that the first step must be a cease-fire, but that is not enough and there must be a comprehensive settlement," Hollande told reporters ahead of his departure.
The high-level European shuttle diplomacy to end the worst East-West crisis since the end of the Cold War came as US Secretary of State John Kerry also visited Kiev on Thursday and Washington mulled whether to supply arms to the Ukraine army. "President Putin can make the choices that could end this war," Kerry said, voicing support for what he called the "helpful" Franco-German plan to be put to the Russian leader on Friday.
As pressure grows for a peaceful resolution to the conflict that has killed over 5,300 people, rebel and Ukrainian forces on the ground agreed a cease-fire for several hours Friday around the battleground town of Debaltseve to allow civilians to leave, both sides said.
An AFP journalist in government-held Debaltseve said some 25 city buses sent by both the rebels and Kiev left the shattered town to take civilians out to their respective territories, although only one separatist bus was full. The sound of sporadic shelling could be heard in the distance but mortar bombardments in the town itself had halted after days of fierce fighting. Hundreds of civilians have been killed over recent weeks in east Ukraine as fighting spiralled after insurgents ignored an earlier truce deal and pushed into government-held territory.
No confirmed details have emerged of what exactly the new European peace proposal contains and there is much disquiet in Kiev after the collapse of the previous peace deal. Kerry said the plan was a "counter-proposal" made by Merkel and Hollande to suggestions made earlier this week by Putin. The European plan was then presented to the US and Ukraine for their input Wednesday. One civilian and two soldiers were killed Friday and 25 wounded in fighting over the past 24 hours, a government official said.
Comments
Comments are closed.