Kerry, Lavrov hold talks as Ukraine toll tops 6,000

The foreign ministers of the US and Russia both said the ceasefire was on the right track, despite repeated breaches of the peace deal that have left hundreds dead.

GENEVA // The US and Russian foreign ministers expressed cautious optimism after holding talks in Geneva on Monday to end fighting in Ukraine, where the UN says more than 6,000 people have died in less than a year.

The meeting between John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov in Geneva was just one of several attempts at mediation on the conflict on Monday. High-stakes talks to resolve a bitter gas dispute between Kiev and Moscow were also due in Brussels.

Speaking separately after their meeting, Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov both said a February 15 ceasefire was on the right track, despite repeated breaches of the peace deal that have left hundreds dead.

The Russian foreign minister welcomed “tangible progress” in the implementation of the agreement reached in Minsk last month, saying “the ceasefire is being consolidated, heavy weapons are withdrawn”.

Mr Kerry said he was “very hopeful” that his talks with Mr Lavrov would help bring about the change needed to end fighting.

“Our hope is that within the next hours, and certainly not more than days, this [ceasefire] will be fully implemented,” he said.

Underlining the momentum, the Russian, Ukrainian, French and German leaders agreed to hold four-way telephone talks on the crisis later on Monday, but Mr Kerry cautioned that there so far had been “a kind of cherry-picking, a piecemeal selectivity to the application of the Minsk agreements”.

While fighting has broadly halted along much of Ukraine’s frontline, several incidents took place over the weekend, with a journalist killed by a mortar shell and eight soldiers injured by rebel fire.

Ukraine’s army said on Monday that one soldier had been killed, but added the ceasefire was still broadly holding.

Both sides have also begun to pull back some heavy weaponry from the frontline, but monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have said it is too early to confirm a full pullback.

“If there continues to be this broad swathe of non-compliance ... there would be inevitable consequences that would place further strain on Russia’s economy,” Mr Kerry said, referring to further sanctions that the US and EU are working on.

The United Nations, meanwhile, dampened hopes raised by the talks with a report that painted a bleak picture of developments in the country.

“More than 6,000 lives have now been lost in less than a year due to the fighting in eastern Ukraine,” UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said.

The report detailed how the conflict was affecting civilians, pointing to arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances committed mainly by armed groups but also in some cases by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.

The swelling violence and dire living conditions have forced increasing numbers of people to flee, and by mid-February, at least one million people had been registered as internally displaced inside Ukraine.

* Agence France-Presse