A fragile cease-fire began in Ukraine at midnight Saturday (12 a.m. Sunday local time, 2200 UTC Saturday) after hours of intense fighting in the eastern part of the country.

Isolated incidents of violence have been reported since the cease-fire took effect.

Under terms of the European-brokered deal, Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatist rebels were to hold their fire. If that holds, both sides are to begin pulling back their heavy weaponry to form a wide buffer zone.

In a live midnight broadcast, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued the order for the country’s armed forces to hold their fire.

Military spokesman Vladyslav Selezynov said the Ukrainian armed forces immediately fulfilled the order, and the big guns fell silent in Donetsk and some other parts of the separatist-leaning east.

The rebel leader in Donetsk said, however, that his forces would not allow Ukrainian troops to leave the city during the cease-fire.

In a statement a short time earlier, Poroshenko expressed concern about risks to the cease-fire posed by the unrest that raged Saturday around the strategic, government-held railway hub of Debaltseve. On Friday, at least 26 people were killed there, including Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.

“Unfortunately, the peace process is threatened, the rebels will use Debaltseve to undermine the cease-fire,” news agencies quoted Poroshenko as saying. “As supreme commander of the armed forces, I want peace.”

Earlier Saturday, President Barack Obama spoke to Poroshenko by telephone and stressed the need for all sides to stop the violence as scheduled. He also expressed concern about the intense fighting that was happening in the hours before the cease-fire was to come into force. Obama expressed the same concerns in a call to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke by telephone with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on Saturday to underscore the importance of implementing the cease-fire. The State Department said Kerry expressed concern about “efforts by Russia and the separatists to cut off Debaltseve” ahead of the cease-fire.  

They also discussed the negotiations in New York on a draft U.N. Security Council resolution welcoming the Minsk agreements.

The Security Council is expected to meet Sunday in an emergency session. U.N. diplomats said the 15-member body would vote on a Russian-drafted resolution calling on all parties to implement the deal.

Photos of artillery systems

Also Saturday, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt posted on Twitter what he said were satellite photos showing Russian artillery systems near the town of Lomuvatka, about 20 kilometers northeast of Debaltseve. The images could not immediately be verified.

Russia has denied sending troops or weapons across the border to aid in the fighting, which has killed at least 5,400 people and wounded thousands more since separatists launched their uprising 10 months ago. Moscow claims that Russian troops seen fighting alongside rebels are volunteers.

“We are very concerned about continued fighting along and beyond the line of contact including in heavily populated civilian areas and reports of additional resupplies of tanks and missile systems coming across the border from Russia in the past few days,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said during a briefing Friday.

“The Russian military has deployed a large amount of artillery and multiple rocket launcher systems around Debaltseve, where it is shelling Ukrainian positions,” said Psaki. She added the U.S. had obtained its own information. “We are confident these are Russian military, not separatist systems. The Russian military also has air-defense systems deployed near Debaltseve. We are also confident these are Russian military, not separatist systems.”

The U.S. said it also has evidence that Russian units along the border with Ukraine were preparing a large shipment of supplies meant for pro-Russian forces fighting in eastern Ukraine.

“This is clearly not in the spirit of the week’s agreement,” said Psaki.

The cease-fire agreement calls for both sides to withdraw heavy weapons, for Ukraine to pull back from the current line of contact, for the separatists to withdraw to a line agreed upon in a Minsk deal reached in September, and for an exchange of prisoners.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and AFP.
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