Ukraine said three of its soldiers have been killed in attacks by Russia-backed separatists over the last 24 hours, in the latest flare-up of violence in eastern Ukraine since a cease-fire agreement was signed in September.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday that one of the troops was killed by a sniper, another by small-arms fire and and a third by mortar fire in separate incidents around eastern Ukraine. A fourth Ukrainian soldier was wounded.
The attacks came as Russia and Ukraine marked Eastern Orthodox Christmas on Wednesday, and ahead of a meeting between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin and the French and German leaders devoted to the Ukraine crisis.
Their talks are due to take place in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, on January 15.
French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have indicated they will attend that meeting only if there is a chance of progress in resolving the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which has claimed more than 4,700 lives since last April.
German government sites hacked
Meanwhile, German government websites were hacked Wednesday by a group demanding that Berlin cut ties with the Ukrainian government, just hours before Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk was set to meet in the German capital with President Joachim Gauck.
The group, which calls itself CyberBerkut, claimed responsibility for the cyber attack in a statement posted on its website.
It said Yatsenyuk hoped to obtain “multi-billion credits” from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to, in its words, “extend the war and not to restore collapsed infrastructure of our country.”
“Berkut” refers to the special riot police implicated in violence during last year’s protests against the rule of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.
More than 100 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the violence that brought down Yanukovych’s government. The unit was disbanded after his ouster.
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