ULAANBATAAR // Russian president Vladimir Putin on Wednesday outlined a peace plan for Ukraine after agreeing with his Ukrainian counterpart on steps toward a ceasefire in the conflict that has raged for more than five months.
Mr Putin called for an end to the rebels’ offensive in the country’s eastern regions and urged the withdrawal of the Ukrainian military from residential areas as part of a seven point proposal he presented in the Mongolian capital.
He said a final agreement may be reached on Friday, when representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the rebels and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe will meet in the Belarussian capital Minsk to discuss the plan.
The Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said Mr Putin and he had agreed on a “ceasefire regime” and the steps toward peace.
While conciliatory statements from Russia have not always led to de-escalation in the past and previous ceasefires have failed to hold, this was Mr Poroshenko’s most definitive statement yet on progress in finding a solution to the conflict.
A lasting truce would be the biggest breakthrough yet in the conflict that the United Nations estimates has cost at least 2,600 lives.
Ukraine, the United States and Europe accuse Mr Putin of backing pro-Russian rebels with troops and equipment. Russia, which faces further sanctions as early as this week over the unrest, has repeatedly denied involvement.
Even amid talk of a truce, the fighting in eastern Ukraine simmered, with government forces bracing to defend the port city of Mariupol.
The US president Barack Obama, in Estonia to reassure eastern European Nato members of their security before heading to the alliance’s summit in the UK, expressed scepticism over the announcement.
“We haven’t seen a lot of follow-up on so-called announced cease-fires,” Mr Obama told reporters in the Estonian capital, Tallinn. If Russia “is serious about a political settlement, that is something we are hopeful for. I’ll leave it up to others to interpret Mr Putin’s psychology on this.”
Mr Putin said his plan includes an end to the military offensive in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions by all sides. He also called for “full-fledged” international oversight over the truce. He also urged an end to the use of warplanes against civilians and settlements in the conflict zone, proposed prisoner swaps without conditions and called for humanitarian corridors.
Mr Poroshenko said he was hopeful that the peace process would begin at the Minsk negotiations. Ukraine is seeking to end “constant violations of agreements, shooting of captured people and civilians, the destruction of schools and infrastructure,” he said.
However, the Ukrainian prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, dismissed Mr Putin’s peace plan as “window dressing for the international community ahead of the Nato summit” and a ploy to duck the sanctions. Mr Putin’s “true plan is to ruin Ukraine and restore the Soviet Union,” he said.
A ceasefire mutually declared by the members of the so-called contact group would allow Russia to avoid further sanctions, according to a German government official.
The European Commission, the European Union’s executive, was due to propose further sanctions on Wednesday. Separately, France said on on Wednesday said that the “conditions” were not in place for the delivery of the first of two warships ordered by Russia, due in fordelivery in October or November. The French presidency said the situation in Ukraine was “serious” and “the actions taken recently by Russia in Eastern Ukraine go against the foundations of Europe’s security”.
Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, denied an earlier assertion by Mr Poroshenko that the leaders agreed on a permanent ceasefire, saying Russia could not reach such an accord as it was not a party to the conflict.
Meanwhile, fighting intensified in eastern Ukraine, with government troops killing 200 rebels in the past 24 hours, the military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said. Insurgents were stealing coal and destroying gas pipelines in actions that Ukrainian authorities said were aimed at curbing energy flows to the EU.
Fighting continued near border crossing between Russia and Ukraine, with the flow of young people in military clothing over the frontier in either direction increasing in the past week, the OSCE said in a weekly report on its observer mission in the region.
Ukraine was preparing to defend Mariupol from rebel attack from land and sea and has sent more troops and equipment there, according to the defense minister, Valeriy Geletey.
* Bloomberg News
