Pro-government forces reported making gains in rebel-held eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, ahead of a key summit aimed at ending the unrest.

The Azov Battalion, a pro-Kyiv volunteer paramilitary group, said via Facebook it captured several villages during an offensive toward the border town of Novoazovsk.

There were also reports of heavy shelling or rocket fire in a residential area in Kramatorsk, which is 50 kilometers from the front line of the fighting in Donetsk.

Kyiv military spokesmen said early Tuesday at least seven Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours of fighting in the east of the country.

Much of the violence has occurred in and around Debaltseve, a strategic town that pro-Russian separatists have been trying to pry from Kyiv forces.

Representatives from Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France are due to meet in the capital of Belarus on Wednesday to try to come up with a peace deal to end the 10-month conflict that has claimed at least 5,400 lives.

Diplomacy

On Monday, President Barack Obama said he will await the outcome of the talks before deciding whether to supply Kyiv with lethal defensive weaponry in its fight against the separatists.

Obama spoke in Washington alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He said diplomacy and sanctions remain his preferred methods for ending Russian support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine.

But he said he had instructed key advisers to examine the plausibility of supplying Kyiv with weaponry, in the event that diplomacy fails to bring peace.

Ukraine leaders insist that such hardware is necessary to offset recent rebel military gains and end the uprising near the Russian border.

For her part, Merkel said she sees no military solution to the conflict, and repeated her insistence on a diplomatic solution to the crisis.

Both leaders sought to quell talk of emerging differences in U.S. and European strategies for winning Moscow’s full cooperation in ending the conflict. And both voiced hopes that the Minsk talks will produce favorable results.

Details of those talks have not been disclosed, and it was not clear Monday whether separatist delegates would join Russian, Ukrainian and European envoys in the negotiations.

Last week, the German chancellor and French President Francois Hollande carried a peace proposal to Moscow, where they met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

That meeting was followed by four-way phone talks that included Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko on Sunday. The quartet agreed to hold face-to-face talks in Minsk.

Hollande, speaking Sunday, said the upcoming talks present “one of the last chances” for reaching peace after nearly a year of fighting in eastern Ukraine.

The French-German plan is based on September’s failed cease-fire, but with more details on timing, according to a senior U.S. State Department official. 

Sanctions

In a related development, the European Union decided Monday to delay imposing sanctions on additional Ukrainian separatists and Russians to await the outcome of Wednesday’s four-nation summit.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the EU had agreed on the sanctions, which include asset freezes and travel bans against 19 people, including five Russians, and also target nine organizations, but that a decision to apply them would depend on the situation “on the ground.”

Also Monday, a Ukrainian military spokesman said 1,500 Russian troops and 300 pieces of military equipment, including Grad missile systems, entered Ukraine from Russia over the past three days.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied providing direct support to separatists in the Russian-speaking east and insists that Russian troops fighting alongside rebels are doing so as volunteers.

However, on Tuesday, hundreds of Russian troops started military exercises in southern Russia near the border with Ukraine, in a show of strength before a summit on the Ukraine crisis in the Belarussian capital Minsk, Reuters reported.

News agencies quoted military officials as saying that  about 2,000 Russian reconnaissance troops had started large-scale exercises in the southern military district.

Separately, more than 600 soldiers had started training in the southern Crimea peninsula, and in Kamchatka, in Russia’s east, 2,500 soldiers of the Pacific Fleet and joint forces were checked for military readiness.

Ukraine general dismissed

Meawhile, Ukraine’s parliament voted on Tuesday to approve President Petro Poroshenko’s proposal to dismiss General Prosecutor Vitaliy Yarema.

Deputies, activists and the country’s Western backers have regularly accused the prosecutor’s office of failing to tackle corruption and roll out reforms.

Also, a Ukrainian official said one civilian was killed and six were wounded in a rocket attack on Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukrainian, a town well behind the front lines.

Donetsk regional police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin said in a statement on Tuesday that Kramatorsk, which is more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) away from the nearest fighting, had come under shelling.

Some material for this report came from Reuters, AFP and AP.
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