EU leaders meet Putin in bid to end Ukraine violence

It comes as terrified civilians piled onto a convoy of buses yesterday in a bid to escape the battleground in the eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve during a brief truce

From left: German chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian president Vladimir Putin and French president Francois Hollande met at the Kremlin in Moscow yesterday. Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP Photo

MOSCOW // German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande met Russian leader Vladimir Putin yesterday in a frantic bid to avoid a further escalation of violence in east Ukraine.

Ahead of the Moscow talks, Ms Merkel played down hopes of a rapid end to surging fighting as she and Mr Hollande try to convince Mr Putin to sign up to a peace plan to stop the conflict.

Ms Merkel and Mr 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 ceasefire”.

Mr 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 Ms Merkel since the start of the Ukraine crisis while Mr Hollande made a brief stopover there in December.

It comes as Ukraine government officials and pro-Russian separatists agreed yesterday to a brief humanitarian truce around the battleground east Ukrainian town of Debaltseve so besieged civilians can leave.

Terrified civilians piled onto a convoy of buses yesterday as they took advantage of a brief truce.

Clutching the few possessions they could carry, residents gathered in small groups on the shrapnel-scarred main square to seize the window of a few hours to flee the shelling.

After over a week of fierce fighting, pro-Russian rebels battling to encircle and take the town had agreed with government forces holding on there to ceasefire to allow civilians to clear out.

Two dozen buses from both the Ukrainian and pro-Russian separatist sides drove into the shattered strategic town along the few roads still navigable.

As the small crowd waited to leave, the boom of sporadic shelling echoed in the distance but for once the centre of the town was quiet.

“People are just asking for the bloodshed to end,” local resident Petro said.

“The people are begging and praying to God and to our authorities to just sit down any way that is possible and talk,” he said.

“Stop the destruction and killing. We have seen enough blood.”

Life for people trapped in the crossfire in Debaltseve has grown increasingly dire.

Amnesty International said earlier this week that most of the town’s former population of 25,000 had fled, but that around 7,000 civilians remain behind.

Those still in the town are forced to spend much of their time sheltering in underground bunkers without water or electricity.

Government officials said they had hammered out a deal with the separatists to allow those that wanted to flee.

“We agreed that 25 buses, not one more, could come today between 8.00am and 10.00am, load up people and evacuate them to wherever they want to go,” said regional deputy governor Oleksandr Klimenko.

Ukrainian military officials said that the same ceasefire could be enforced on Saturday to help more people flee.

* Agence France-Presse