Ukraine’s military for the second consecutive day reported a “significant reduction” in attacks by pro-Russian rebels, but said a cease-fire has not yet taken hold in eastern Ukraine.
Rebels carried out 19 attacks on government-held territory and targets over the previous 24 hours, according to a Facebook statement Wednesday by the press center for the Kyiv military.
On Tuesday, rebels began pulling heavy weapons back from the front lines, as required by an internationally mediated cease-fire that was supposed to begin February 15.
The Ukraine government has said it will not pull back its weapons until the rebel attacks cease completely. It said it is abiding by the terms of the truce, but reserves the right to return fire.
Meanwhile, Alexei Miller, the CEO of Russian gas company Gazprom, said Wednesday Russia would stop exporting natural gas to Ukraine unless it received prepayment from Kiev for energy supplies, Interfax reported.
Gazprom also said that Ukraine had approximately three days left of prepaid gas deliveries from Russia, Interfax reported, citing a letter from Miller to the head of Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz.
Cease-fire violations
On Tuesday, the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Paris, but disagreed over who is to blame for violations of the cease-fire.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said the top diplomats agreed on some “technical aspects,” including support of a monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the discussion was mainly focused on the implementation of the peace deal.
Speaking Tuesday before a U.S. Senate committee, Secretary of State John Kerry said Russia has repeatedly lied to him about its activities in Ukraine.
“Russia is engaged in a rather remarkable period of the most overt and extensive propaganda exercise that I’ve seen since the very height of the Cold War,” Kerry said. “They have been persisting in their misrepresentations — lies — whatever you want to call them, about their activities there to my face, to the face of others on many different occasions.”
Kerry also said that talks are taking place within the U.S. administration on whether to supply Ukraine with defensive lethal weapons.
Deploying military trainers
British Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday that failure to challenge Russia on Ukraine would result in the destabilization of Moldova and the Baltic States. Speaking before a parliamentary committee, Cameron said Britain will deploy military personnel to Ukraine in the next month to help train the Ukrainian army.
In Washington, a U.S. military official said the Pentagon also will be deploying a small number of troops to Ukraine to provide combat medical training.
A NATO military official also said Tuesday that “the actions of pro-Russian separatists in Debaltseve following the latest cease-fire agreement have made it very difficult for anyone to trust their pronouncements.”
Russia also has continued to secretly provide support to separatists while publicly calling for peace, said the official, who added that what matters now are actions.
According to a separate NATO official, Russia has provided more than 1,000 pieces of equipment including tanks, rocket launchers and air defense systems to the separatists.
Russia has repeatedly denied supplying direct aid to rebels and says Russian soldiers seen fighting alongside rebels during the 10-month rebellion are doing so as volunteers
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