Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers retreat from strategic town taken by pro-Russia separatists leaving their dead and wounded comrades behind A long line of military vehicles crawled north on the highway leading out of the abandoned government positions in Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine, pulling a motley assortment of half-destroyed ambulances, trucks without wheels and tanks without treads. Those soldiers who had managed to get out of the ruins of the besieged town were immediately recognisable, their wide eyes staring out from a thick coating of grime as they waited for buses to take them back to Artemivsk. A group of national guardsmen fired their Kalashnikov assault rifles in the air to celebrate their close escape. Read moreIn what marks a strategic victory for pro-Russia forces and a stinging defeat for Kiev thousands of government troops retreated from Debaltseve starting in the small hours of Wednesday most of them on foot through the surrounding fields In the government-controlled village of Luhanske which lies at the end of a deadly 10-mile stretch of highway out of Debaltseve first lieutenant Yuriy Prekharia described how he led 50 men through the fields and forests to reach Ukrainian positions “We knew that if we stayed there it would be definitely either be captivity or death,” he told the Guardian as armoured vehicles passed by carrying hundreds of dirty soldiers Heavy artillery boomed and rockets streaked through the sky as government forces tried to cover their comrades’ retreat Standing in front of the presidential plane in a camouflage coat before leaving Kiev for a visit to the front line, Ukraine’s leader Petro Poroshenko said he had ordered the “planned and organised retreat” from the strategically important rail hub after the opposing side had denied access to European observers But the withdrawal seemed anything but orderly and Prekharia said the decision to pull back had been made by the senior commanders on the ground when they saw that the situation was becoming catastrophic Other soldiers said artillery and ambushes had been waiting for them on their way out Combat medic Albert Sardarian said he had been woken up at 1am for a sudden withdrawal in armoured vehicles with about 1,000 other men Pro-Russia forces ambushed the column in the morning “There was one guy whose hand had been blown off I could only stop his blood and put him in a comfortable place hoping that the armoured vehicles following us would pick him up,” Sardarian said Smoking cigarettes outside the hospital in Artemivsk described leaving behind carnage and destruction in Debaltseve it’s destroyed,” said a soldier with the call sign Sailor Lots of bodies haven’t been picked up because the separatists are shooting.” It was Chechnya,” said a soldier named Igor Nekrasov referring to the bloody separatist conflicts in Russia’s Chechnya region Nekrasov said he expected the opposing side to continue attempting to take strategically important cities echoing the doubts that many in Artemivsk hold after two previous failed truces An Ukrainian soldier rides on an armoured vehicle during the retreat from Debaltseve which has fallen to Russia-backed separatists after weeks of relentless fighting Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP“You can’t trust the Russians a gunner in an armoured personnel carrier that was preparing to pick up more soldiers fleeing Debaltseve The Ukrainian authorities insisted that Debaltseve had never been surrounded but army medics and soldiers who escaped the city told the Guardian that shelling and mines along the road had cut off the flow of ammunition supplies and ambulances to Debaltseve for more than a week Kiev’s armed forces command said on Wednesday that 22 Ukrainian soldiers were killed and more than 150 wounded in Debaltseve in the past few days although with many Ukrainian troops reported to still be in the city it could be some time before the real death toll becomes clear The director of the Artemivsk morgue told the Guardian that the bodies of 23 soldiers had been delivered since Tuesday night Russian state-owned television showed rebels hoisting their flag over a high-rise building in Debaltseve as well as images of several dozen captured Ukrainian troops being led along a village road The spoils of war: pro-Russia rebels recover a tank (left) abandoned by retreating Ukrainian troops Photograph: Pierre Crom/Getty ImagesThe seizure of the city which holds a highway crossing and a rail junction connecting Donetsk and Luhansk is a major victory for the breakaway “people’s republics” based in those two cities “Coal from the DPR will go to Luhansk and other cities through this railroad junction,” Donetsk leader Alexander Zakharchenko told a Russian website from a position on the outskirts of Debaltseve on Tuesday He was later injured in the ankle by an exploding mortar shell The fall of Debaltseve also represents a win for president Vladimir Putin whose government has backed the pro-Russia forces with heavy weapons and soldiers Putin called for Kiev to give up Debaltseve who met with the Russian president in Minsk last week to hammer out a peace plan for eastern Ukraine told a European Union summit that Putin had attempted to delay the ceasefire for 10 days to force the city’s surrender But the end of weeks of fighting for Debaltseve could breathe new life into the stillborn ceasefire which was broken by shelling in the area almost as soon as it began on Sunday Rebel leader Zakharchenko had previously said his forces would observe the ceasefire everywhere except in Debaltseve which he said rightfully belonged to the rebels Although both sides were supposed to begin withdrawing heavy weapons on Tuesday according to the Minsk agreement Kiev and Donetsk said they could not do so while fighting was ongoing But in a sign of progress for the peace plan said on Wednesday afternoon that his forces had begun pulling back heavy weapons and expected Kiev to respond in kind Donetsk deputy military head Eduard Basurin said his forces were pulling back five self-propelled guns from Olenivka The retreat continues: Ukrainian servicemen approach Artemivsk after withdrawing from the key town of Debaltseve Photograph: Gleb Garanich/ReutersBut fighting reportedly continued on Wednesday afternoon near the coastal city of Mariupol where Poroshenko said last week his forces had begun a “counter-offensive” to push the front line back to where it was before a September ceasefire The local organisation Mariupol Defence reported that rebels had fired nine times with mortars and machine guns at the village of Shirokyne which has reportedly seen tank and artillery battles in recent days “What agreements can we have with terrorists The main problem is that we sit at a table with terrorists and sign a paper and then base our policy on this paper that is not worth anything,” said Ilya Kiva deputy police chief for the Donetsk region He complained that Ukrainian forces had only been allowed to open retaliatory fire after the ceasefire began “Yet again these bandits used the ceasefire to make treacherous strikes against us.” The ignominious retreat may have political fallout for Poroshenko’s government a well-known MP and commander of the Donbass battalion blamed the Kiev leadership for the defeat and said in a post on Facebook that he would call for the resignation of army commander Viktor Muzhenko at the next session of the security and defence committee We had enough men and material,” Semyonchenko wrote “The problem was with the leadership and coordination of actions … What’s going on now is the result of incompetent management of our troops even though they’re trying to cover this up with a propaganda storm.” The Ukrainian Weekly depends on your support A financial donation in any amount will help us pay for ongoing coverage of the war in Ukraine The Ukrainian Weekly was founded in 1933 to serve the Ukrainian American community and to function as a vehicle for communication of that community’s concerns to the general public in the United States It is the official English-language publication of the Ukrainian National Association View Sponsors List A generous gift in any amount helps us continue to bring you this service Only 3,000 to 4,000 of Debaltseve's 25,000 people remain Shells fall constantly on the strategic railway hub in eastern Ukraine '+n.escapeExpression("function"==typeof(o=null!=(o=r(e,"eyebrowText")||(null!=l?r(l,"eyebrowText"):l))?o:n.hooks.helperMissing)?o.call(null!=l?l:n.nullContext||{},{name:"eyebrowText",hash:{},data:t,loc:{start:{line:28,column:63},end:{line:28,column:78}}}):o)+" \n '+(null!=(o=c(e,"if").call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2PreText"):l,{name:"if",hash:{},fn:n.program(32,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:63,column:20},end:{line:63,column:61}}}))?o:"")+"\n"+(null!=(o=(c(e,"ifAll")||l&&c(l,"ifAll")||n.hooks.helperMissing).call(r,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Text"):l,null!=l?c(l,"cta2Link"):l,{name:"ifAll",hash:{},fn:n.program(34,t,0),inverse:n.noop,data:t,loc:{start:{line:64,column:20},end:{line:70,column:30}}}))?o:"")+" Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Russia-backed rebels pose by a road sign at the entrance in Debaltseve on Friday after their post-cease-fire seizure of the strategic town Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists continued to shell government positions in the country's contested east despite a truce agreement that went into effect nearly a week ago. a British parliamentary report published today accuses Europe's leaders and diplomats of a "catastrophic misreading" of the mood in the Kremlin ahead of the crisis that has plunged Ukraine into turmoil and threatened to re-draw the post-Cold War map in the region According to Reuters: "The Ukrainian military said pro-Russian separatists had attacked positions held by government troops 49 times in the past 24 hours 'The number of attacks show the terrorists do not want to completely silence their guns,' Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoly Stelmach said." NPR's Corey Flintoff sums up the situation on the ground: "There's really not much incentive for the Russians and the separatists to stop fighting four days after the cease-fire was supposed to have taken effect The cease-fire agreement is vague about where these two sides should stop and there's no penalty for those who want to keep advancing." The town in question is Debaltseve. Ukrainian government troops beat a demoralizing withdrawal on Thursday, The New York Times writes. Kiev's forces have been left "griping about incompetent leadership and recounting desperate conditions and gruesome killing as they beat a haphazard retreat ..." Fighting also raged around the port city of Mariupol. On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called on the United Nations to provide peacekeeping forces to monitor the cease-fire "None of the provisions of the peace accord forged during a marathon overnight negotiating session last week in Minsk have been accomplished according to the agreement's terms and timeline A Tuesday deadline for beginning the withdrawal of heavy weaponry came and went And there has been no apparent movement toward a release of prisoners." Meanwhile, the BBC says the report on Ukraine by a committee of Britain's House of Lords says the European Union underestimated "the depth of Russian hostility to [the EU's] plans" for closer ties to Ukraine "The (British) government has not been as active or as visible on this issue as it could have been," the committee also said The report concludes that "Russia is increasingly defining itself as separate from Its Eurasian identity has come to the fore and Russia perceives the EU as a geopolitical and ideological competitor The model of European 'tutelage' of Russia is no longer possible." Become an NPR sponsor You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed Looking to access paid articles across multiple policy topics Interested in policy insights for EU professional organisations Pro-Russian rebels pounded encircled Ukrainian government forces on Monday (16 February) and Kyiv said it would not pull back heavy guns while a truce was being violated leaving a European-brokered peace deal on the verge of collapse The European Union kept pressure on Russia and the rebels by announcing a new list of separatists and Russians targeted with sanctions to which Moscow promised an "adequate" response The United States said it was "gravely concerned" by the fighting in and around the town of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine after a ceasefire agreement that came into force on Sunday and said it was closely monitoring reports of a new column of Russian military equipment moving toward the region "These aggressive actions and statements by the Russia-backed separatists threaten the most recent ceasefire," US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement "We call on Russia and the separatists it backs to halt all attacks immediately." Fighting subsided in many parts of eastern Ukraine under a ceasefire deal reached last week in marathon talks involving the leaders of France But the truce appears to have been stillborn in Debaltseve where the most intensive fighting has taken place in recent weeks "The situation is fragile," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel the driving force behind the deal reached on Thursday after all-night talks in the Belarussian capital Minsk "It was always clear that much remains to be done And I have always said that there are no guarantees that what we are trying to do succeeds It will be an extremely difficult path," she told reporters in Berlin along with the leaders of France and Ukraine expressed concern about continued fighting in Debaltseve and said observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) must have "free access" for their work in eastern Ukraine Rebels said soon after the ceasefire came into effect they had no intention of observing it at Debaltseve where they have been advancing since January and now have a Ukrainian unit all but encircled Washington says the rebel operation around the town is being assisted by the Russian armed forces The State Department spokeswoman called on Russia and the separatists to engage with the OSCE to facilitate the cease fire The OSCE said on Sunday that the rebels had refused to allow its monitors to reach Debaltseve after the ceasefire took effect Reuters reporters near the front said Debaltseve was being relentlessly bombarded with artillery At least six tanks as well as armoured personnel carriers and artillery could be seen in woods near Vuhlehirsk Military trucks headed along the main road in the direction of the town to regular bursts of shelling and the firing of Grad rockets and machine guns "You can hear there is no ceasefire," said a rebel fighter with a black ski mask who gave his name as Scorpion said Ukrainian troops had violated the ceasefire 27 times in the past 24 hours Kyiv said its forces had been shelled more than 100 times in eastern Ukraine since the truce took effect five of its servicemen had been killed and 25 wounded and that it could not carry out an agreement to pull back big guns in such conditions "The pre-condition for withdrawal of heavy weapons is fulfilling Point One of the Minsk agreements - the ceasefire One hundred and twelve attacks are not an indicator of a ceasefire," said a Kyiv military spokesman responded by saying his forces were "only ready for a mutual withdrawal of equipment" In another complication likely to set back hopes of peace he and another separatist leader said the rebels would pull out of the Minsk agreements if Kyiv made any further moves to abandon Ukraine's neutral status -- also a red line for Moscow which fears Ukraine might seek to join the NATO alliance The separatists offered the Ukrainian forces a safe corridor out of Debaltseve if they gave up their weapons but a military spokesman for Kyiv Fighting began in east Ukraine after the overthrow of a Moscow-backed president in Ukraine last February and Russia's annexation of the Crimea peninsula a month later who has called parts of Ukraine "New Russia," has sent troops and weapons to back the rebels Moscow denies this and accuses the West of waging a proxy war in Ukraine to seek "regime change" in Russia Hopes that Thursday's deal will end a conflict that has killed more than 5,000 people have been dampened by the collapse of an earlier truce when rebels advanced last month Western countries say they reserve the option of expanding economic sanctions on Moscow over the crisis hoping a growing financial crisis in Russia will persuade Putin to use his influence with the rebels to stop the fighting But some fear he wants the conflict to fester for years so that Kyiv cannot control east Ukraine and Russia can retain influence there The EU's new list of 19 people and nine organisations hit by asset freezes and travel bans was dominated by Ukrainian separatists but also targeted popular Russian singer Iosif Kobzon sometimes dubbed Russia's equivalent of Frank Sinatra >> Read: EU puts ‘Russian Sinatra’ on visa list which will be followed by an adequate response runs contrary to common sense and will not help efforts to find a solution to the inter-Ukrainian conflict," the Russian Foreign Ministry said.  The leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine gave their support to a deal to end fighting in eastern Ukraine following 17-hour negotiations in the Belarussian capital Minsk on 12 February The four leaders had committed to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, according to a joint declaration In a press conference in Minsk the transcript of which was published on the Kremlin website Putin said that one of the outstanding issues is that the “representatives of the Donetsk and Lugansk peoples’ republics” say their forces have encircled 6.000 to 8.000 Ukrainian troops in the area of Debaltseve and that they expect them to surrender without violence presumably retreating under the terms of a backroom agreement were hit on the road by punishing rebel fire The present Ukrainian government and the Supreme Rada (parliament) elected last October are predominantly pro-Western which reflects the majority opinion of the Ukrainian people A political and constitutional regime change like the one Putin and the rebels are demanding would seem to require a fundamental destabilization in Kyiv: Ukrainians must be forced to feel vulnerable their military publicly humiliated by pro-Russia forces The Debaltseve debacle seems to be already fomenting a storm Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers have been constantly commenting on Facebook about the Debaltseve battle from the field The commander of the “Donbas” volunteer battalion and Rada deputy Semen Semenchenko has accused the Ukrainian military command (General Staff) of gross incompetence have accused Semenchenko of disclosing sensitive military information in his Facebook posts which resulted in rebels bombarding the columns of troops retreating from Debaltseve (Fresh-news.org Semenchenko announced the creation of a joint command of 17 volunteer battalions Poroshenko is being “misled” by the military command on the real losses and the general situation A “parallel volunteer general staff” has been previously promoted by extreme nationalist leader (and Rada deputy) Dmitry Yarosh (UNIAN The Russian plan of utter Ukrainian destabilization seems to be progressing One Ukrainian soldier leaving the area called it "a one-way street to the grave" It is a crucial rail hub for rebel-held areas Fighting has devastated the area and the civilians who are left are living underground Essential digital access to quality FT journalism on any device Complete digital access to quality FT journalism with expert analysis from industry leaders Complete digital access to quality analysis and expert insights complemented with our award-winning Weekend Print edition Terms & Conditions apply Discover all the plans currently available in your country See why over a million readers pay to read the Financial Times NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urges Russia to "withdraw all its forces from eastern Ukraine" Ukraine's military says 80% of its armed forces have now withdrawn from Debaltseve Ukraine leader says forces are pulling back urges world to use tough response to Russia The search for evidence of direct Russian military participation in the operation scarce as it is due to continued “plausible deniability” by Moscow resembles an analysis of shadows on a wall the emergence of numerous shadows appears to support the involvement of Russian regular troops Apart from increased reports of military hardware and manpower crossing into Ukraine from Russia there are two clear shadows that were cast over the Russian manufactured narrative: the presence in the town of a senior Russian general and sightings of military hardware belonging to a Russian brigade from the North Caucasus “Yustas” is the nickname of fictional Soviet spy Schtirlitz (in a novel by Yu amidst the confusion that erupted over the sighting of the “man who looks like” a senior Russian general state TV channel Rossiya 1 aired General Lentsov denying his involvement in military operations in Debaltseve “The information that emerged in the media today […] I departed from here about an hour ago But I was told while traveling that I should definitely speak in public and deny that I am or even was in Debaltseve I could not physically arrive there today,” the man captioned as the “head of a group from the Russian side on coordination of issues related to the ceasefire Lieutenant-General of the Russian Armed Forces Aleksandr Lentsov” was shown saying Rossiya 1 noted that an official Russian mission was monitoring the ceasefire in southeastern Ukraine (Ekho Moskvy Interfax reported that General Lentsov had telephoned Rossiya 1 with more details of his denials of involvement in the conflict protesting that his role there was linked only to the ceasefire agreement we have worked together with our Ukrainian colleagues on coordinating a sector-by-sector plan for the opposing sides to withdraw heavy weapons to a safe distance I can confirm the sides’ mutual interest in an organized withdrawal of artillery systems from the line of contact in accordance with the Minsk Agreements of September 19 [2014] and the agreements of February 12 [2015]” (Interfax material support for the attack on Debaltseve and continued reports of the involvement of regular Russian troops point to a combined-arms operation to take the town And given Putin’s hesitance over the timing of the latest ceasefire this combined-arms operation appears to have moved ahead of schedule Russian journalist Andrey Kolesnikov said that the Debaltseve issue was the main area of contention during the Minsk talks Putin said that the Ukrainian military units at Debalsteve were surrounded which could have undermined the ceasefire agreement; all sides disputed whether the ceasefire actually applied to the town Other Russian analysts noted the importance of Debaltseve and suggested that both the (Moscow-backed) rebels and the Ukrainian military needed a respite from the fighting the director of the Moscow-based Center of Social and Political Sciences said that after the Ukrainian army pull-out from Debaltseve it will need several months to recover its combat capabilities (The Moscow Times Myanmar earthquake: Working to meet the biggest needs 90% of our funding comes from individual donors. Learn how you can support MSF’s lifesaving care with a gift. We need your support to continue this lifesaving work A Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) team managed to reach Debaltseve on February 21, three days after rebels took the eastern Ukrainian city MSF emergency coordinator Olivier Antonin was part of the team that provided medical aid and evaluated the medical needs there he describes what he saw in the devastated city When we arrived in Debaltseve, we quickly saw that it had been hit hard The bridge leading to the center of town had been damaged and we had to turn back It was hard to know whether people were still living in the little houses Severed high-voltage power lines swung in the wind We found a road that led toward the train tracks we passed through a tunnel where other signs of the war were visible—half-eaten potatoes and empty food cans littered the ground we entered a town that did not seem deserted There was a lot of activity in the town square People seemed to be looking for something and wandering around They were so desperate they overcame the shame of asking “Where can I find medicine?” “How can I transport my family member who is unable to move?” The telephone system does not function. You can’t organize anything from any distance. You have to be right there on the spot. There are only three doctors left in all of Debaltseve—the head doctor from one of the town’s two hospitals and two doctors who see patients at the only medical facility It has been improvised on the ground floor of a building on the square We transferred boxes of drugs—supplies for treating wounded patients for primary health care and single-use materials—along with a few loaves of bread we lined the vehicles up "popka k popke" as they say, or "bumper-to-bumper," in English That precaution might have been unnecessary people waited their turn calmly at a food distribution held in a building that had been a supermarket not so long ago and plastic sheeting to seal windows were distributed with mounds of snow covering the ground and temperatures below 0° Celsius The new authorities set up a mobile kitchen in the town square to serve hot meals where they prepare buckwheat kasha and serve hot tea people are waiting calmly to recharge their cellphone or flashlight “There’s no electricity or water,” the women tell us “You have to fetch water from a well.”   Debaltseve’s population totaled 25,000 people They stayed through the blaze of fighting that raged for more than three weeks.” Haiti violence pushes MSF trauma hospital to its limits South Sudan: MSF strongly condemns deliberate bombing of its hospital .. © Médecins Sans Frontières 2025 Federal tax ID#: 13-3433452 Unrestricted donations enable MSF to carry out our programs around the world we will reallocate your donation to where the needs are greatest Russia-supported militants have captured Debaltseve a strategically located town in eastern Ukraine (Interfax In a telephone conversation with the author on February 19 the spokesman for the Ministry of Defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) proclaimed that the militias of the Donetsk and Luhansk “People’s Republics” (DPR and LPR) are now in control of the entire town “Our military units have long been present in Debaltseve—largely militia from the LPR most of them Cossacks—but there are also units from the DPR,” the breakaway region’s defense ministry spokesman said armed separatists surround the 3,000-strong group of the Ukrainian army (Author’s interview “It is true that terrorists control Debaltseve now but it is foolish [to say] that they surrounded the 3,000-strong group of the Ukrainian army Almost all Ukrainian armed forces left Debaltseve with tanks and other military equipment,” the head of Ukraine’s Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) Press Center Staff “Now Cossacks are checking the documents of people in Debaltseve dressed in civilian clothes,” Evgeny Kaplin told Jamestown on February 19 after returning to Debaltseve that same day the leader of the humanitarian mission Proliska About 50 percent of the buildings have been destroyed 74 kilometers to the northeast of Donetsk by road Prior to the conflict in Donbas (eastern Ukrainian region encompassing Donetsk and Luhansk provinces) the population of Debaltseve was only around 25,000 people this town has one of the largest railway hubs in Ukraine and is strategically located between the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk along the main transit corridor directly linking the two separatist metropolitan centers Debaltseve became the primary contentious point in the fighting between the Russia-backed separatist groups and the Ukrainian army The reason for such heavy fighting was that the Ukrainian army managed to advance deep into territory under the control of the self-proclaimed DPR in the area around Debaltseve attempted to surround the 8,000-strong group of the Ukrainian army operating there in a telephone conversation with the author on January 25 DPR defense ministry spokesman Eduard Basurin openly stated that capturing Debaltseve was the strategic goal of the “DPR’s army.” The continuing assault on Debaltseve had cast doubt on the viability of the current truce, agreed upon in Minsk on February 12 (see EDM Judging by the Ukrainian mainstream and social media few Ukrainian analysts and journalists believe that the recent peace talks in Minsk were successful An article by the influential Kyiv-based analyst Vitaly Portnikov summarizes these views well: “Can peace be reached with the DPR and—more broadly—with Putin Peace for Putin would actually mean his defeat,” he writes “Putin is losing even the economic levers that were so strong before [former Ukrainian president] Viktor Yanukovych fled the country since peace for him equals the final loss of Ukraine It is not incidental that in the run up to the talks in Minsk one of the Russian propagandists said that if Donbas ‘gains independence,’ Putin will have no more levers to influence the ‘anti-Russian drift’ of Ukraine,” Portnikov argues (Liga.net there are serious risk that the DPR-LPR separatists will next try to advance on the frontline cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk—located just 94 and 70 kilometers north of Donetsk The situation is further amplified by the fact that Kramatorsk and Slavyansk were the first cities in eastern Ukraine that saw the rise of armed separatist units under the command of Igor Strelkov (a Girkin) who was dispatched to Donbas by Russia The separatists have publicly declared on multiple occasions that the “liberation of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk is a question of honor” for them (Rosbalt.ru the separatists shelled Kramatorsk with Grad missiles 16 people were killed in the city and 64 sustained injuries These numbers included both the military and civilians This author visited Kramatorsk one day after the shelling and can testify that the destruction in the city was not significant a shell broke through the roof of a house and a few balconies were destroyed but no building was demolished in its entirety Kramatorsk authorities estimated the damage at around $190,000 (Rosbalt.ru the shelling of Kramatorsk caused panic to spread throughout the area According to locals who spoke to Jamestown many people who owned homes in other Ukrainian regions have already left this frontline city rumors persist in Kramatorsk and Slavyansk that the separatists intend to take over these towns again The situation is further aggravated by the fact that about 40,000 refugees from the Donbas war zone currently reside in Kramatorsk and Slavyansk For the two cities with populations of only about 100,000 each “The separatists have stated multiple times that they will ‘liberate’ Kramatorsk and Slavyansk and a relatively high percent of refugees sympathize with the terrorists,” warned Denis Begunov an official from the Political Department of the Slavyansk city government “After the separatists’ assault on Debaltseve rumors about a possible revanche [of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk] by the separatists have strengthened further I am sure that we will be able to keep the situation under control,” Begunov assured Jamestown in early February (Author’s interview While the so-called Normandy group of leaders of Germany Ukraine and Russia continue to try to push for the implementation of the February 12 Minsk ceasefire agreement (Kyiv Post the military situation on the ground in Donbas remains fluid and dangerous hostilities in eastern Ukraine are far from over As long lines of shell-shocked Ukrainian troops straggled out of Debaltseve last month after a stinging defeat to the Russian-backed separatists there the focus was on how the separatists had used the support of Russian-supplied weaponry and support troops to inflict a stinging defeat on Kiev's forces in the key railroad junction town However by focusing on the role played by Russia in eastern Ukraine many analysts have overlooked the extent to which the incompetence of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the Ukrainian military high command caused Kiev's Debaltseve debacle Both before the battle and subsequently Kiev's political and military leadership seemed completely out touch with the reality of events on the battlefield The shape of the front lines after the first Minsk agreement left the Ukrainian military holding a little sliver of land stretching into rebel territory that was surrounded by separatists forces on three sides Toward the bottom of this sliver of land lay Debaltseve Once the separatist forces regained full control of Donetsk airport they immediately began placing troops and equipment into positions surrounding the several thousand Ukrainian forces at the bottom of the Debaltseve salient the rebels very publicly proclaimed their intention to cut the supply lines into Debaltseve with the objective of completely surrounding the thousands of Ukrainian troops in the town It was clear then to even casual observers that Kiev's forces were in a very precarious position Ukraine's high command should have withdrawn its thousands of troops from the Debaltseve salient to Artemivsk and other towns at the top of the salient This would have created a straight line across the front that would no longer have been surrounded on three sides by separatist troops Why Ukraine's leadership did not take this step in late January to pre-empt the separatist encirclement strategy is a mystery While Kiev would have conceded Debaltseve to the separatist troops Ukraine's military would have created a new line of demarcation with a straight front that was at no risk of immediate encirclement "To keep the bulge in Debaltseve was from a military perspective utterly useless," said Gustav Gressel an expert on military affairs in Eastern Europe at the European Council on Foreign Relations "If you have no chance for further offense and having the much less experienced and sophisticated troops retreating to a line that is much easier to defend should have been the priority," added Gressel As the battle for Debaltseve heated up in February the Ukrainian forces in the city began to come under increasingly sharp attack from separatist forces Rebel troops were clearly determined to cut the main highway into Debaltseve that was used to resupply Ukrainian troops with ammunition and military hardware rather than order a controlled withdrawal while the road out of Debaltseve still remained open the Ukrainian high command ignored reality and ordered its troops to dig in and fight the rebels managed to capture the tiny town of Logvinovo a strategic point hugging the highway into Debaltseve and it was clear that thousands of Ukrainian troops were now surrounded While the situation in Debaltseve for Ukrainian troops was becoming untenable there remained one more chance for Kiev to affect a controlled withdrawal from Debaltseve Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin reportedly spent many hours arguing whether Debaltseve was actually "encircled." Poroshenko declined the opportunity to accept Putin's offer to withdraw Ukrainian forces from Debaltseve under the truce agreement Poroshenko then compounded this mistake by agreeing to push out the official start of the cease-fire by 48 hours the separatist forces used this time to tighten the noose on Kiev's forces and shortly thereafter Ukrainian troops began streaming out of Debaltseve in small disorganized groups across fields and side roads leaving behind much equipment as well as dead and wounded Ukrainian troops behind this was not the first time that the Ukrainian high command allowed its troops to be surrounded rather than withdrawing to more defensible lines rebel troops surrounded Ukrainian forces in a southern "cauldron" of a narrow sliver of land between Donetsk and Luhansk The disaster at Ilovaisk was another example of the Ukrainian high command sacrificing its troops by not recognizing in time that they would be surrounded Why do Ukrainian troops keep becoming entrapped in these "cauldrons" and what reforms should the Ukrainian military undertake to prevent future "Debaltseve-style" disasters Gressel believes that Poroshenko should start by firing the current Ukrainian general staff "I know that the figures at the top posts of the army are pure political appointees who owe their posts to party-affiliation Their competences played a minor — if any — role," Gressel said the military's command and control and logistics chains need to function properly so that troops in the field can count on being resupplied — something that did not occur in Debaltseve Western initiatives to send advisers and trainers can also play a critical role in assisting Ukraine's military reforms and such assistance may be as important Poroshenko also needs to do a much better job speaking openly to Ukraine's citizens about the conflict While the Debaltseve debacle was a military setback for Kiev the defeat was exacerbated by Poroshenko's comical attempt to spin the Debaltseve defeat into a victory Asserting that it was he who had ordered his forces to retreat from Debaltseve Poroshenko claimed that "there was no encirclement and our troops left the area in a planned and organized manner with all the heavy weaponry." Numerous Western journalists on the scene interviewed fleeing Ukrainian troops who described the withdrawal as anything but planned and organized Troops spoke of breaking up into small streaming across fields and forests to escape the separatist encirclement in any way possible reports of front-line Ukrainian soldiers mocking Poroshenko's claim that there was no "encirclement" were widespread Poroshenko's statement indicates a leader either completely removed from the military reality his troops faced or else was simply an attempt to mislead the Ukrainian people Neither of these possibilities depict the Ukrainian President as a competent and inspiring leader capable of rallying his country and making the reforms needed to turn Ukraine's military into an effective fighting force While Ukraine's leadership has the tendency to blame Russia for all its problems until Kiev sorts out its own house it will continue to suffer further Debaltseve-style setbacks Josh Cohen is a former USAID project officer involved in managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union. He contributes to a number of foreign policy-focused media outlets and tweets at @jkc_in_dc Russia's Prosecutor General's Office has designated The Moscow Times as an "undesirable" organization criminalizing our work and putting our staff at risk of prosecution This follows our earlier unjust labeling as a "foreign agent." These actions are direct attempts to silence independent journalism in Russia The authorities claim our work "discredits the decisions of the Russian leadership." We see things differently: we strive to provide accurate We, the journalists of The Moscow Times, refuse to be silenced. But to continue our work, we need your help please support us monthly starting from just $2 and every contribution makes a significant impact independent journalism in the face of repression 2015 8:26 AM [ET] | Originally published: February 17 2015 1:11 AM EST;The fragile cease-fire in Ukraine appeared to be near collapse Tuesday just 48 hours after it was implemented as separatist fighters claimed to have taken a key rail hub after clashes with Ukrainian government forces Russia-backed rebels said they had pushed the Ukrainian army out of the contested town of Debaltseve, east of Donetsk, the Associated Press reports A Ukrainian army official claimed five troops had been killed within the past 24 hours A leading representative from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) had earlier pledged to travel to the city on Tuesday to assess the situation after members of the group were denied access over the weekend The ongoing hostility threatened to nix the second Minsk accords hammered out in the Belarusian capital last week They were aimed at bringing an end to months of fighting in southeast Ukraine after an earlier peace deal reached in September unraveled last month Western leaders launched fresh appeals for restraint as a deadline to remove heavy weapons from the front approached Tuesday “It was always clear that much remains to be done. And I have always said that there are no guarantees that what we are trying to do succeeds,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin “It will be an extremely difficult path.” State Department said it was “gravely concerned by the deteriorating situation in and around Debaltseve,” and used its Twitter account to emphasize that diplomats were closely monitoring reports that a new column of Russian military equipment was headed toward the embattled hub “We call on Russia and the separatists it backs to halt all attacks immediately, engage with the OSCE to facilitate the cease-fire, and, as called for in the packet of measures agreed to on Feb. 12, fully implement their Sept. 5 and 19 Minsk commitments,” Jen Psaki, a spokesperson with the State Department, said in a statement The E.U. announced Monday the addition of 19 Russian-linked individuals and nine organizations to a sanctions list, in an apparent bid to ratchet up pressure on the Kremlin. The individuals targeted by the latest rounds of sanctions included leading pro-Moscow separatist fighters in Ukraine along with Russian singer and MP Iosif Kobzon Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it was “bewildered” by the E.U.’s decision and accused the body of doing Kiev’s “war bidding.” “Such decisions … defy common sense and are ruining the emerged opportunity to find a solution to the internal Ukrainian conflict,” said the Foreign Ministry in a statement Contact us at letters@time.com Polly Mosendz is a breaking news reporter for Newsweek She was previously a staff writer for The Wire and associate editor for The Atlantic Her reporting on the Islamic State has been recognized by a variety of organizations Her writing has appeared in The New York Observer Yahoo News and a variety of other publications she is fluent in both Ukrainian and Russian Mosendz attended the New School University where she studied media writing and American history She lives in Greenwich Village with many books either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content During what was supposed to be a ceasefire pro-Russian rebels have taken control of Debaltseve As one separatist said to a Reuters reporter on Friday: "What ceasefire?" The rebels triumphed after the Ukrainian military evacuated because their soldiers were honoring the terms of the ceasefire and not using force The separatist groups Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic small arms and grenades to push the Ukrainian forces out of Debaltseve the separatists searched for deserted ammunition and weapons amid the rubble and we'll use them against [Ukrainian forces] themselves We have to expand," a rebel told Reuters while searching for ammunition with his battalion According to the BBC mines have been placed in open fields and the separatists have been attempting to get rid of them without suffering casualties the fighting has blocked food deliveries and resulted in the loss of heat and electricity They should bring dry meals in blue packaging since the pasta is already finishing," a teacher who was waiting in line for food told Reuters Even though the rebels have taken hold of Debaltseve and the ceasefire is still in place Locals reported hearing sounds of fighting and gunfire at night though some are now saying they feel safe to leave their homes during daylight Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsletters in your inbox See all 2015A Ukrainian government troop waves to a armored vehicle driving on the road towards Debaltseve near the town of Artemivsk The fighting between Russia-backed separatists and Ukrainian government forces has continued despite the agreement reached by leaders of Russia Germany and France in the Belarusian capital of Minsk on Thursday Much of the fighting had taken place near Debaltseve a key transport hub that has been hotly contested in recent days The leaders agreed to implement a cease-fire the embattled Ukrainian rail hub of Debaltseve fell Wednesday to Russia-backed separatists who hoisted a flag in triumph over the town The Ukrainian president confirmed that he had ordered troops to pull out and the rebels reported taking hundreds of soldiers captive Associated Press reporters saw several dozen Ukrainian troops retreating with their weapons Wednesday morning from the town in eastern Ukraine Some were driving to the nearby town of Artemivsk in trucks while several others One soldier spoke of heavy government losses while another said they had not been able to get food or water because of the intense rebel shelling A third spoke of hunkering down in bunkers for hours unable to even go to the toilet because of the shelling They smoked cigarettes in the frigid winter air and gratefully accepted plastic cups of tea given to them by locals "We're very happy to be here," the hungry soldier told the AP "We were praying all the time and already said goodbye to our lives a hundred times." Russian Channel One showed the rebels hoisting their flag over a high-rise building in Debaltseve the army had withdrawn 80 percent of its troops from the town and two more columns had yet to leave he denied claims by the rebels that the Ukrainians were surrounded and said the troops were leaving Debaltseve with their weapons and ammunition Our troops and formations have left in an organized and planned manner," he said in televised comments He denied reports of large Ukrainian casualties and hundreds of soldiers captured had urged Kiev to admit defeat in the contested town saying "the only choice" of the Ukrainian troops was to "leave behind weaponry NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused the separatists of refusing to respect a cease-fire agreement and urged Russia "to end support for separatists and to withdraw forces and military equipment from eastern Ukraine." Russia has denied supplying the separatists with troops and weapons a claim scoffed at by Western nations and Ukraine who point to NATO satellite pictures of Russian weapons in eastern Ukraine Poroshenko sought to portray the withdrawal as a tactical decision that "laid shame on Russia which called on the Ukrainian troops yesterday to lay down arms gave a blow in the teeth to those who were trying to encircle them," he said at a Kiev airport as he traveled to eastern Ukraine to "shake the hands" of the soldiers leaving Debaltseve Russian state-owned television showed images Wednesday of several dozen Ukrainian troops being escorted along a village road by the rebels The withdrawal attracted fierce criticism from Ukrainian nationalist politicians as well as from the commanders of volunteer battalions fighting alongside government troops a battalion commander and a member of parliament on Facebook accused the military command of betraying the country's interests in Debaltseve "The problem is the command and coordination which links the two major separatist cities of Donetsk and Luhansk had raged on despite a cease-fire deal brokered by European leaders which took effect Sunday Some retreating troops said Wednesday they had not received any reinforcements from the government in Debaltseve and had been walking and retreating for a whole day One Ukrainian soldier who introduced himself only as Nikolai said he was not even sure if his unit was retreating or being rotated out of Debaltseve our commanders didn't tell us whether it's retreat or just rotation," he said "They just told us to change our positions because our unit had been staying there for quite a long time and we had sustained quite big losses." Germany and France who negotiated the cease-fire deal last week are expected to talk about its implementation later Wednesday French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Wednesday accused the Russian-backed rebels in Debaltseve of acting "in clear violation of the cease-fire." "Russia and the separatists have to immediately and fully implement the commitments agreed to in Minsk starting with the respect of the cease-fire and the withdrawal of all heavy weapons," Mogherini said in a statement the German government condemned rebels' advance on Debaltseve Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert described the onslaught as "a serious strain on the (Minsk cease-fire) agreement as well as hopes for peace in eastern Ukraine." rebel leaders said Wednesday that they had begun withdrawing heavy weaponry from parts of the front line where the cease-fire was holding Basurin told Russian Rossiya 1 channel that rebels were pulling back five self-propelled guns from Olenivka on the road to the government-controlled port of Mariupol "We're not waiting for Ukraine to start pulling back the weaponry together with us." Observers from the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe have tried to get to Debaltseve since Sunday but have been blocked by the rebels The separatists' Donetsk News Agency quoted rebel official Maxim Leshchenko saying the OSCE will be allowed to visit Debaltseve "soon." and John-Thor Dahlburg in Brussels contributed to this report DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine -- Rebel fighters, many of them Cossacks, roamed the streets of Debaltseve on Thursday a day after Ukrainian forces began withdrawing from the besieged town Associated Press journalists drove Thursday around about half of the key rail hub that has been the focus of weeks of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russia-backed separatists and government troops They found all its neighborhoods under the control of rebel fighters dozens of Ukrainian military vehicles were retreating to the government-held town of Artemivsk Many were riddled with bullet holes or had their windshields destroyed Soldiers in them spoke of enduring weeks of harrowing rebel shelling barrages designed to annihilate their ranks they would fire at us just to stop us from sleeping," a Ukrainian soldier named Andrei told the AP They did this constantly for three weeks." As rebels waved separatist flags in Debaltseve a Russian Cossack leader and prominent warlord in separatist eastern Ukraine drove around in a Humvee-like vehicle captured from Ukrainian troops All around lay the wrecked remains of Ukrainian armored vehicles A government encampment near a crossroads lay deserted Rebel fighters searched through its bunkers and abandoned tents looking to salvage equipment and clothing left behind by the quickly retreating troops Two rebel fighters inspected a tank left behind by Ukrainians what they called a "gift" from the government troops They then grabbed a bloodied blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag lying next to the tank and ground it into the frozen earth with their boots Civilians milled about on debris-littered streets in devastated residential areas But in a reminder of the dangers of the area one car carrying Cossacks hit a land mine 200 yards from the AP journalists killing one Cossack and injuring one other who spearheaded imperial Russia's expansion and helped guard its far-flung outposts faced persecution under Bolshevik rule but resurfaced after the 1991 Soviet collapse Ukrainian troops began abandoning Debaltseve on Wednesday after weeks of heavy fighting and by Thursday said more than 90 percent of its forces had been withdrawn Capturing the town is a significant military victory for the rebels because it's a railway junction that straddles the most direct route between Donetsk and Luhansk Ukraine's military general staff said 13 soldiers were killed and 157 wounded by artillery fire during the withdrawal It also said more than 90 soldiers were taken prisoner during the battle for Debaltseve and the whereabouts of 82 others was unclear Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the three-week siege had left the town's infrastructure in ruins "A strategic rail hub has stopped its existence the way it was," he said Thursday in Kiev Retreating fighters appeared shell-shocked we were attacked by artillery and grenade launchers we came under attack by tanks and assault groups several times." He said two of his men had been wounded in the trip Ukraine raised the pressure on the separatists Thursday by cutting off shipments of natural gas to the area The national gas company Naftogaz said the cutoff was due to significant damage to gas transit infrastructure A top official of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic said the region would rely on its gas stockpiles and "seek an exit from this situation in order to switch to using Russian gas." A cease-fire for eastern Ukraine was supposed to go into effect Sunday but Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh said rebels had in the last day repeatedly shelled a village on the outskirts of the strategic port city of Mariupol The war in eastern Ukraine has killed 5,600 people and forced over a million to flee their homes since fighting began in April a month after Russia annexed the mostly Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula Russia denies arming the rebels or supplying fighters but Western nations and NATO point to satellite pictures of Russian military equipment in eastern Ukraine In Paris, French President Francois Hollande said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke Thursday with the leaders of Ukraine and Russia - Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin - about cease-fire violations and their consequences The Kremlin confirmed the four leaders had spoken by phone and praised the cease-fire deal saying it has led to "a reduction in the number of civilian casualties." which oversaw marathon peace talks between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders last week in Minsk both signaled Thursday that they're determined to salvage the cease-fire deal and keep the two sides talking The German government said the four leaders had agreed "to stick to the Minsk agreements despite the serious breach of the cease-fire in Debaltseve." It said "immediate concrete steps" were necessary to ensure that the cease-fire is fully implemented and heavy weapons are withdrawn Both sides were supposed to pullback heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine beginning Tuesday but international monitors said Thursday they had not seen either doing so "We have not observed the withdrawal of heavy weapons however we have observed and reported on the movement of heavy weapons," said Michael Bociurkiw of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe with the disputed territory of Debaltseve in rebel hands speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing negotiations described the attitude as "pragmatic," saying continued fighting "was not acceptable to us." Germany has lowered expectations for the cease-fire in Ukraine German Chancellor Angela Merkel told supporters that "Germany and France together will not ease off on doing everything so that Ukraine can go its way and have its territorial integrity - but we want to do it with Russia despite public anger in Kiev over the fall of Debaltseve an overall cease-fire for eastern Ukraine was probably more important than who controlled one town "(Germany is) more clearly aware than many in Kiev that Ukraine basically needs a cease-fire or a freezing of the conflict more urgently than Moscow," said Gustav Gressel a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin "Kiev needs to see sooner or later how it gets out of the war." He added that "from a German point of view a continuation of the war is probably a greater evil than a not-so-good end to the war." This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Retreat from contested railway hub connecting Donetsk and Luhansk marks strategic victory for rebels More than 80% of Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve are said to have left GuardianUkraine This article is more than 10 years oldUkraine troops withdrawing from key town of DebaltseveThis article is more than 10 years oldRetreat from contested railway hub connecting Donetsk and Luhansk marks strategic victory for rebels Ukrainian troops are retreating from the hotspot of Debaltseve after intense fighting in what marks an important strategic victory for pro-Russia forces. “All units are being withdrawn. The order was given at six this morning by army command,” said Yevgeny Shevchenko, aide to the commander of the Donbass Battalion, on the road between Debaltseve and Artemivsk. He said 6,000 soldiers had been in the city. Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said more than 80% of his troops in the town had left. The size of Debaltseve – it was home to about 25,000 people before the war emptied its streets – belies its strategic importance to rebels as the site of a rail junction connecting their strongholds of Donetsk and Luhansk. Dozens of vehicles – tanks, armoured fighting vehicles, troop transport trucks, ambulances and vans – were streaming down the highway leading from Debaltseve to the main Ukrainian lines near Artemivsk on Wednesday. “Debaltseve is no longer ours,” said a fighter named Ilya, who said he had just come from there. Kiev’s forces appeared to be laying down suppressing fire towards the town to help their comrades retreat. Outside Artemivsk, outgoing artillery was heard and a multiple rocket launcher seen firing off a volley towards Debaltseve. Read moreThe Ukrainian forces were taking heavy casualties escaping the city which has been virtually surrounded by rebel forces for at least a week Makeshift ambulances were delivering wounded men to the hospital said at least 90 wounded had been taken out One medic said he had taken 20 dead to the morgue most of whom had been killed making their way out of the town Some had been killed on top of troop carriers as they drove Rebels have been heavily shelling any vehicles on a 10-mile stretch of the “road of life” connecting Debaltseve and Artemivsk said Ukrainian tanks had taken high ground near a smaller road leading to Artemivsk through Mironovka to cover the escape Servicemen ride on a tank as they leave Debaltseve. Photograph: Reuters“We got out through the fields,” said a soldier with the call sign Sailor. Most of the city is captured and government forces were “breaking out little by little”, he said. Another soldier, named Yury, said he had been in a convoy bringing out about a dozen wounded. They had been under heavy mortar and machine gun fire and had fallen into rebel ambushes twice along the way, he said. Soldiers from the 108th brigade of the national guard said they had been picking up men escaping from Debaltseve by foot. When asked about the intensity of the enemy fire along the escape route, they pointed to a rear wheel of their armoured fighting vehicle, which had been shredded by a mortar round, they said. Read more“Guys are running out on foot through the fields because [rebels] are shelling vehicles They give us the coordinates and we pick them up,” a soldier with the vehicle He said the unit had picked up hundreds of men from Debaltseve on Wednesday who had been stationed on the outskirts of Debaltseve fired their Kalashnikov assault rifles into the air until their magazines were empty Trucks full of men were also heading towards the front One soldier said they were going to reinforce their positions on the main frontline A Ukrainian serviceman near Artemivsk on Wednesday Photograph: Gleb Garanich/ReutersThe defeat was a black eye for Poroshenko’s government which has long struck a defiant pose in the face of pro-Russia aggression in the east Some in the army were angry over his repeated denials that Debaltseve was surrounded despite evidence on the ground that almost no supplies or ambulances had been able to get through since 8 February Poroshenko tried to argue that the retreat had “put to shame Russia which on Tuesday was still demanding Ukrainian soldiers put down their weapons” a prominent MP and commander of the Donbass battalion blamed the Kiev leadership for the defeat and said in a post on Facebook that he would call for the resignation of Viktor Muzhenko at the next session of the security and defence committee David Cameron said on Wednesday that Europe could not turn a blind eye to Russia’s involvement in Ukraine warning Vladimir Putin that he could face sanctions that would have financial and economic consequences for his country for many years to come The British prime minister said there was a temptation for every European country to leave the responsibility for dealing with what is happening in Ukraine to someone else. “That would be a terrible mistake, so Britain has been leading the argument that Russia’s behaviour has been completely unacceptable, and consequences have to follow in terms of sanctions,” he said. Read moreCameron’s intervention came after the US accused Russia of violating the Ukraine ceasefire and joined other UN security council members in pouring scorn on a resolution drafted by Moscow approving the truce Samantha Power, the US ambassador to the UN, said it was “ironic to say the least” that Russia produced the motion at the same time as it was “backing an all-out assault” in Ukraine despite the ceasefire. The UN motion was passed on Tuesday night, with the support of the US, but a number of security council members condemned Russia’s stance. Shortly before the meeting, the council issued a statement expressing “grave concern at the continued fighting in and around Debaltseve” and demanded that all parties to the conflict cease hostilities immediately. On Wednesday, the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said rebel activity in Debaltseve were in clear violation of the ceasefire. “The EU stands ready to take appropriate action in case the fighting and other negative developments in violation of the Minsk agreements continue,” she said, making an apparent threat of further economic sanctions on Moscow. With Debaltseve in the hands of pro-Russia troops, the ceasefire may have more of a chance to succeed. The Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko had previously said his forces would observe the ceasefire everywhere except in Debaltseve, which he said rightfully belonged to the rebels. According to the peace plan agreed in Minsk last week, both sides were supposed to begin withdrawing heavy weapons on Tuesday, but Kiev and Donetsk said they could not do so while fighting was ongoing. Igor Plotnitsky, the head of the Luhansk People’s Republic, said on Wednesday afternoon that his forces had begun pulling back heavy weapons. ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine (AP) — After weeks of relentless fighting, the embattled Ukrainian rail hub of Debaltseve fell Wednesday to Russia-backed separatists, who hoisted a flag in triumph over the town. DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine | Rebel fighters, many of them Cossacks, roamed the streets of Debaltseve on Thursday, a day after Ukrainian forces began withdrawing from the besieged town. The mood was celebratory, with fighters laughing, hugging each other and posing for photos. Associated Press journalists drove Thursday around about half of the key rail hub that has been the focus of weeks of fighting in eastern Ukraine between Russia-backed separatists and government troops. They found all its neighborhoods under the control of rebel fighters. On the road out of town, dozens of Ukrainian military vehicles were retreating to the government-held town of Artemivsk. Many were riddled with bullet holes or had their windshields destroyed. Soldiers in them spoke of enduring weeks of harrowing rebel shelling, barrages designed to annihilate their ranks. "Starting at night, they would fire at us just to stop us from sleeping," a Ukrainian soldier named Andrei told the AP, sitting in his truck outside Artemivsk. "They did this all night. Then in the morning, they would attack, wave after wave. They did this constantly for three weeks." As rebels waved separatist flags in Debaltseve, Nikolai Kozitsyn, a Russian Cossack leader and prominent warlord in separatist eastern Ukraine, drove around in a Humvee-like vehicle captured from Ukrainian troops. All around lay the wrecked remains of Ukrainian armored vehicles. A government encampment near a crossroads lay deserted. Rebel fighters searched through its bunkers and abandoned tents, looking to salvage equipment and clothing left behind by the quickly retreating troops. Two rebel fighters inspected a tank left behind by Ukrainians, what they called a "gift" from the government troops. They then grabbed a bloodied blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag lying next to the tank and ground it into the frozen earth with their boots. Civilians milled about on debris-littered streets in devastated residential areas, some thanking the rebel fighters. But in a reminder of the dangers of the area, one car carrying Cossacks hit a land mine 200 yards from the AP journalists, killing one Cossack and injuring one other. Cossacks, who spearheaded imperial Russia's expansion and helped guard its far-flung outposts, faced persecution under Bolshevik rule but resurfaced after the 1991 Soviet collapse. Ukrainian troops began abandoning Debaltseve on Wednesday after weeks of heavy fighting, and by Thursday said more than 90 percent of its forces had been withdrawn. Capturing the town is a significant military victory for the rebels because it's a railway junction that straddles the most direct route between Donetsk and Luhansk, the separatists' two main cities. Ukraine's military general staff said 13 soldiers were killed and 157 wounded by artillery fire during the withdrawal. It also said more than 90 soldiers were taken prisoner during the battle for Debaltseve and the whereabouts of 82 others was unclear. Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said the three-week siege had left the town's infrastructure in ruins. "A strategic rail hub has stopped its existence the way it was," he said Thursday in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. Retreating fighters appeared shell-shocked. "We left under heavy fire, driving on small roads," said Andrei, the Ukrainian soldier. "As we were leaving, we were attacked by artillery and grenade launchers. As we moved, we came under attack by tanks and assault groups several times." He said two of his men had been wounded in the trip. Ukraine raised the pressure on the separatists Thursday by cutting off shipments of natural gas to the area. The national gas company Naftogaz said the cutoff was due to significant damage to gas transit infrastructure. A top official of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic, Andrei Purgin, said the region would rely on its gas stockpiles and "seek an exit from this situation in order to switch to using Russian gas." A cease-fire for eastern Ukraine was supposed to go into effect Sunday, but Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh said rebels had in the last day repeatedly shelled a village on the outskirts of the strategic port city of Mariupol. The war in eastern Ukraine has killed 5,600 people and forced over a million to flee their homes since fighting began in April, a month after Russia annexed the mostly Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula. Russia denies arming the rebels or supplying fighters, but Western nations and NATO point to satellite pictures of Russian military equipment in eastern Ukraine. In Paris, French President Francois Hollande said he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke Thursday with the leaders of Ukraine and Russia — Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Putin — about cease-fire violations and their consequences. The Kremlin confirmed the four leaders had spoken by phone and praised the cease-fire deal, saying it has led to "a reduction in the number of civilian casualties." France and Germany, which oversaw marathon peace talks between the Ukrainian and Russian leaders last week in Minsk, Belarus, both signaled Thursday that they're determined to salvage the cease-fire deal and keep the two sides talking. The German government said the four leaders had agreed "to stick to the Minsk agreements despite the serious breach of the cease-fire in Debaltseve." It said "immediate concrete steps" were necessary to ensure that the cease-fire is fully implemented and heavy weapons are withdrawn. Both sides were supposed to pullback heavy weapons in eastern Ukraine beginning Tuesday, but international monitors said Thursday they had not seen either doing so. "We have not observed the withdrawal of heavy weapons, however we have observed and reported on the movement of heavy weapons," said Michael Bociurkiw of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Paris and Berlin appeared to hope that, with the disputed territory of Debaltseve in rebel hands, the cease-fire can now take hold. A top French official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing negotiations, described the attitude as "pragmatic," saying continued fighting "was not acceptable to us." Germany has lowered expectations for the cease-fire in Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel told supporters that "Germany and France together, will not ease off on doing everything so that Ukraine can go its way and have its territorial integrity — but we want to do it with Russia, not against Russia." One analyst said, despite public anger in Kiev over the fall of Debaltseve, an overall cease-fire for eastern Ukraine was probably more important than who controlled one town. "(Germany is) more clearly aware than many in Kiev that Ukraine basically needs a cease-fire or a freezing of the conflict more urgently than Moscow," said Gustav Gressel, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. "Kiev needs to see sooner or later how it gets out of the war." He added that "from a German point of view, a continuation of the war is probably a greater evil than a not-so-good end to the war." Balint Szlanko in Artemivsk, Ukraine, Jim Heintz in Kiev, Ukraine, Laura Mills in Moscow, Lori Hinnant in Paris, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed reporting. as fighting escalated sharply in the country’s eastern region “I hope that the responsible figures in the Ukrainian leadership will not hinder soldiers in the Ukrainian army from putting down their weapons,” said Putin The pro-Russian rebels have been rapidly advancing in the southeastern town of Debaltseve and have reportedly surrounded over 5,000 Ukrainian troops The fighting in Debaltseve broke out despite a cease-fire agreement reached in Belarusian capital The rebels claim the cease-fire does not apply to Debaltseve and say they have already taken control of the town and captured “hundreds” of Ukrainian soldiers “Eighty percent of Debaltseve is already ours,” rebel leader Eduard Basurin said “A cleanup of the town is under way.” The Ukrainian army has refuted these statements saying they are holding their positions and contesting the number of prisoners claimed by the rebels Although the U.S. has considered sending defensive weapons to aid Ukrainian forces in the conflict, State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Tuesday that “getting into a proxy war with Russia is not anything that’s in the interest of Ukraine or in the interest of the international community.” Write to Rishi Iyengar at rishi.iyengar@timeasia.com ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine - Government soldiers pulled out of a ferociously contested railway hub in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday, ending a siege so intense the retreating troops said they couldn't get water or food amid relentless shelling by Russian-backed separatists. At least six soldiers were killed in the withdrawal and more than 100 wounded. President Petro Poroshenko sought to portray the fall of Debaltseve in a positive light, saying the pullback was carried out "in a planned and organized manner," despite assertions by exhausted and dirt-caked soldiers, some of whom made their way out on foot, that their forces suffered heavy losses. No matter the circumstances, the retreat appeared to be an acceptance by the Ukrainian leader of a humiliating defeat in exchange for a chance at pushing a shaky truce agreement forward and securing the pullback of heavy weapons. The loss of Debaltseve was a serious setback for the army. The town is a strategic railroad junction that lies on the most direct route between the separatist two eastern-most major cities, Donetsk and Luhansk. By taking control of it, rebels gain significant transportation connections to boost their regions' capacity to function as a unified entity. Its strategic importance kept the battle raging even after a cease-fire between Ukrainian forces and the Russia-backed rebels went into effect Sunday, and appeared to be mostly holding elsewhere after fighting that has killed more than 5,600 people since April. Relinquishing the town could remove the major impediment to a lasting cease-fire and begin the next step that was agreed to in a peace deal last week - the pullback of heavy weapons by both sides to create a buffer zone at least 30 miles wide. But the images of traumatized soldiers and their stories of deprivation will be another wound to a national psyche already bruised by Russia's annexation of the Crimean peninsula last March and the vicious fighting in the east, where Ukrainian forces suffered heavy losses at the hands of rebels they and the West claim got a huge boost from Russian equipment and troops. Semyon Semenchenko, a battalion commander and a member of parliament, accused the military command of betraying the country's interests in Debaltseve. "We had enough forces and means," he said in a Facebook post. "The problem is the command and coordination. They are as bad as can be." Exactly two years ago, Sergeant of the 3rd SF regiment Vadym Dovhoruk, who was then part of group led by Captain Yurii Butusov, was ambushed while escorting a column from Debaltseve during the “truce” on February 16, 2015. In the interview for “Censor.NET” (conducted by Vika Yasynska and me), Vadym Dovhoruk told us how Captain Butusov perished, whom he did not abandon until the last minute. Because of the battle that broke out, the vehicle with wounded servicemen which was following his APC was able to turn around and thus save the lives of those on board. “Yura Butusov was once my group leader, but then we were scattered and found ourselves in different groups. Personnel of the 3rd SF regiment accompanied columns from Bakhmut to Debaltsevo. At the base, Yura came up to me and asked: “Vados, will you come with me as part of my group? I need men with experience”. I said: “Leader, I will go with you”. Yura was conscious and ordered everyone to get out of the vehicle. He realized from the start that there would be no escape. He had a grenade in his pocket, for himself, the last one… Yura was wounded by the first explosion, he cried: “Guys, you are the best, I love you! Forgive me, if I did something wrong!” That is when I passed out and fell to the ground. I opened my eyes – one of my arms had been torn off by the explosion and our critically wounded leader was leaning on my remaining arm. My comrade, Vitalii Feditnik, was on top of me but he was already dead. We fell silent. And Yura said to me: “Vados, forgive me that it has to end like this”. I answered: “Leader, everything is OK”. He: “Let’s try to get out”. That’s when I saw that the side of his body was severely lacerated. Splinters literally nailed him down to the armour. He was in terrible pain, he couldn’t break away but he tried to crawl. The bleeding didn’t stop… He cried out in pain, he could not do it with the help of his hands, so he planted his feet firmly on the ground and pushed himself out. He did not want to give up. We fell out of the APC. I crawled up to him – snowflakes landed on the leader’s face but they did not melt… I have many ghastly recollections from the war – both explosions and deaths. But, maybe, the most difficult thing – was to witness how a lifeless comrade lay on me, and how our leader died in front of my eyes, who had still been alive several minutes ago and had said that he was in severe pain and felt hot. I looked at him and understood that there was nothing I could do. I cannot forget that feeling of helplessness… Unfortunately, two of my comrades – Serhii Hlondar and Oleksandr Korinkov, were taken captive during that battle and are still in the hands of the enemy. I would like for them to return home as soon as possible. Today, on the second anniversary of that battle, I am driving to Bakhmach, to the grave of my leader, People’s Hero Captain Butusov. The memory of Yura will remain with me forever”. The retreat from Debaltseve, though cast by Kiev authorities as strategic, marked the latest setback in the Ukrainian government’s yearlong battle against insurgents who they say are armed and instigated by Moscow. Loss of the railhead cedes an important asset to the separatists, as it connects their two strongholds in Donetsk and Luhansk and moves the de facto front line deeper into government-held territory. The separatist victory was accomplished under cover of a Feb. 12 cease-fire agreement that was supposed to halt all hostilities early Sunday but didn’t. European leaders who brokered the deal criticized the violations but were powerless to force compliance. Russian President Vladimir Putin last week endorsed the peace plan along with the leaders of Germany, France and Ukraine in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, apparently with an eye to freezing the status quo of massive disruption of Ukraine’s industrialized east and distracting from Kiev’s efforts to undertake economic reform and fight corruption. The war in eastern Ukraine was sparked by Russia’s seizure of the Crimean peninsula a year ago, after a pro-Europe rebellion that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, a compliant Kremlin ally who had been doing Putin’s bidding in blocking Ukraine’s drift toward the European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Ukrainian soldiers in Debaltseve, recently reinforced to 8,000-strong, had maintained a weakening hold on the shattered and evacuated town until Wednesday, when the Kiev government gave in to a separatist ultimatum for the surrounded troops to leave or face capture. Putin, during a visit Tuesday to Budapest, Hungary, urged Kiev leaders to withdraw their soldiers to avert a bloodbath. Six government soldiers were killed during the retreat and more than 100 wounded, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said at a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council. Poroshenko said in televised remarks that 80% of the government’s troops had been pulled back from Debaltseve “in a planned and organized manner with all the heavy weaponry.” But the scene on the road from Debaltseve into neighboring Artemivsk told a different story. As Ukraine’s 128th Mechanized Brigade made its arduous retreat early Wednesday, separatists fired at their backs, killing and injuring an untold number, survivors told journalists as they staggered to relative safety. Dozens of soldiers with a tank unit convoy were headed to first-aid stations for treatment of their wounds. Others told of leaving behind dead comrades and those who had gone missing. “We gave the ‘seps’ a hell of a beating with this gal,” Ivan, 34, from the western city of Uzhgorod, said of the defense put up with a howitzer tank that broke down as it entered Artemivsk. “But look … our equipment is old. She was made in the 1970s. They had more ammunition and more modern stuff.” Ivan, who would give only his first name to spare his family further worry, said his brigade had been fighting in Debaltseve for five months. The last month had been endless days and nights of blasts from Grad rockets, tanks and other heavy artillery raining down around them and destroying most of the city. Only about 3,000 civilians remained in the city, nearly all of them staying in basements with no power or water and little food. Wounded soldiers couldn’t get out, and any attempt to resupply the unit from outside the separatists’ cordon would have been a death trap, Ivan said. Another retreating soldier, Ihor, said the railway junction was destroyed in the fighting that was so intense last week that dozens were killed and hundreds wounded on both sides. The hard-won rail hub will be unusable for the foreseeable future, he said. Soldiers with the 169th Battalion, a conscripted group from the northern city of Chernihiv, said they had started out from Debaltseve early in the morning after getting orders from their commander, a short, stocky man who goes by the nom de guerre Crazy Daddy. The commander had lost his voice after weeks of shouting over the sound of shelling. His troops had been surrounded for days and had to make their way out on foot through woods and mined farmland, he said in a raspy, hushed voice. They had no radios to call for help. Eventually, they met up with other government troops and made their way over the more than 12 miles of road leading to Artemivsk. A dozen of the men rested on the roadside with their packs and Kalashnikovs. Many seemed unsure what their next move would be, but there seemed to be little regret that they were out of Debaltseve. “There’s no need to discuss it,” the commander said with a dismissive wave when asked whether the retreat from Debaltseve represented a major loss. “We just want peace, that’s it.” Russia’s state-run Channel One television showed separatists hoisting the Russian tricolor over a multi-story building in Debaltseve’s center, as well as images of captured government soldiers being escorted out of town by the gunmen. Maj. Gen. Alexander Rozmaznin, Ukraine’s envoy to the joint cease-fire monitoring mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said the government troops were out of Debaltseve by day’s end and awaiting redeployment “to continue the defense of our motherland from new positions.” The National Defense and Security Council decided to appeal to the United Nations to send a peacekeeping mission to eastern Ukraine. Poroshenko said Moscow failed to get its rebel proxies to abide by the cease-fire and was responsible for the continued fighting that prevented both sides from pulling back heavy weapons from the front lines as of Tuesday, a key provision of the Minsk accord. The Ukrainian president said he had demanded a firm reaction from the international community to “Russia’s brutal violation of the Minsk agreements.” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg called on Russia “to end support for the separatists and to withdraw forces and military equipment from eastern Ukraine,” as prescribed by the Minsk peace plan. The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, also accused the separatists of taking Debaltseve “in clear violation of the cease-fire.” “Russia and the separatists have to immediately and fully implement the commitments agreed to in Minsk, in line with yesterday’s U.N. Security Council resolution, starting with the respect of the cease-fire and the withdrawal of all heavy weapons,” she said in a statement. But with the Kremlin’s proxies now securely in control of the territory they occupy in Ukraine’s east and well positioned to make a drive for the next strategic asset, the Black Sea port of Mariupol, the Western warnings seemed to hold out little prospect of getting Russia or the separatists to reverse course. Special correspondent Ayres reported from Artemivsk, and Times staff writers Loiko and Williams from Moscow and Los Angeles, respectively. Special correspondent Victoria Butenko in Kiev contributed to this report. Sergei L. Loiko has covered wars, crises and daily life in Russia and the former Soviet states for the Los Angeles Times since 1991. Politics World & Nation California Subscribe for unlimited accessSite Map Ukraine - Almost every building was gravely damaged nearly every window smashed in this Ukrainian town left unrecognizable by months of relentless shelling Children played in the rubble where their homes once stood while neighbors boiled water in open fires as temperatures dipped below freezing Two days after government forces fled Debaltseve in disarray leaving the Russian-backed separatists in total control of the strategic town Residents who could not or refused to flee came blinking out of makeshift shelters to soak up the rare winter sun Cossack fighters rolled jubilantly away on commandeered trucks having secured another decisive victory for the rebels whose gutted apartment was just three blocks away from a Ukrainian military encampment said she and more than a dozen neighbors cowered in basements for seven months The nightly terror of shelling worsened in January as separatists massively intensified their onslaught "For a month we've had no bread and water," the 60-year-old said adding that it had been weeks since she and her neighbors had bathed trying to rub away the dirt on her soiled maroon coat a gaping hole left by a shell strike revealed the shattered remains of an apartment basement much like the one in which she took refuge Debaltseve's ordeal had been expected to end with the cease-fire agreement forged last week by the leaders of Ukraine the attacks intensified as the rebels moved to capture a town deemed strategically important for its role as a railway hub linking the two largest separatist-held cities Reports of violations of the truce continued Friday A Ukrainian military spokesman said separatists fired on government positions nearly 50 times in the preceding 24 hours while the rebels claimed that Ukrainian forces had violated the cease-fire 20 times was hit overnight by artillery and mortar fire Vice President Joe Biden condemned the rebel offensive in Debaltseve in a phone call with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko saying the separatists were directly supported by Russian troops in "blatant violation" of peace agreements A White House statement said the leaders also discussed ways the cease-fire deal can be monitored and the withdrawal of heavy weapons ensured At a crossroads along the highway to Debaltseve Cossacks and other rebel fighters were shipping out Friday taking captured Ukrainian armored vehicles and trucks with them sappers detonated anti-tank mines left behind by the retreating Ukrainian troops trace their historic roots to both Ukraine and southern Russia They faced persecution under Bolshevik rule but resurfaced after the 1991 Soviet collapse and are now recognized in Russia as an ethnic group who consider themselves descendants of the czarist-era horsemen thousands gathered to mark the anniversary of the 2014 sniper shootings that killed more than 50 people the bloodiest day of the monthslong protests that led to the ouster of Ukraine's Russia-friendly president armed separatists began seizing buildings in the mainland east The war in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 5,600 people ne has killed more than 5,600 people and forced over a million to flee their homes since fighting began in April Moscow issued a stern warning Friday to cash-strapped Ukraine that it needed to remit payment soon if it wants to continue receiving Russian gas raising the threat of a cutoff during the harsh winter Following a bruising price and debt dispute last year Russia now requires Ukraine to pay in advance for gas shipments Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned that its most recent payments would only be good for another three to four days rebel talk of victory was mixed with contempt for the pro-Western Ukrainian government and its troops said he used to train a Ukrainian mixed martial arts team before taking up arms against the government "I will no longer represent the Ukrainian flag," he said as he sat atop a tank with a dozen other fighters The Debaltseve residents who stayed behind directed their anger almost exclusively at the Ukrainian forces although the bulk of the damage to the town appeared to have been caused by separatist shelling "I hope they kick the Ukrainians out of the Donbass region We will rebuild all this through collective effort," said Ina Morozova The warring sides were supposed to begin drawing back heavy weapons from the front lines Tuesday but international monitors say they've seen no sign of that yet Russian and Ukrainian military officials overseeing the hoped-for peace process announced Friday that the Ukrainian government and the rebels had worked out a plan to begin the weapons pull-out an envoy for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe who led the talks with Russia and Ukraine that also included rebel figures said she believes the unrest in Debaltseve will not quash the prospects for peace "there is not a single day in the Ukrainian conflict when we can feel sure what the next day will bring." Ukraine — After weeks of relentless fighting "We're very happy to be here," the hungry soldier said "We were praying all the time and already said goodbye to our lives a hundred times." Russian state-owned television also showed images of several dozen captured Ukrainian troops being escorted along a village road by the rebels a volunteer battalion commander and a member of the Ukrainian parliament who was highly critical of the government's decision to retreat said in a statement that 167 injured soldiers have been evacuated from Debaltseve He mentioned a high death toll and said some bodies had been left behind but did not give specific numbers Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko sought to portray the withdrawal as a tactical decision that "laid shame on Russia." He denied reports of large Ukrainian casualties and rebel claims of many soldiers captured saying troops were leaving Debaltseve with their weapons and ammunition He said the army had withdrawn 80 percent of its troops from the town by Wednesday morning and two more columns had yet to leave Our troops and formations have left in an organized and planned manner," he said in televised comments "The Ukrainian troops … gave a blow in the teeth to those who were trying to encircle them," Poroshenko said at a Kiev airport as he traveled to eastern Ukraine to "shake the hands" of the soldiers leaving Debaltseve saying "the only choice" of the Ukrainian troops was to "leave behind weaponry Despite reports of Ukrainian forces giving up the fight for Debaltseve rebel artillery and rocket fire were still being shot at the town at regular intervals Wednesday NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg accused the separatists of refusing to respect a cease-fire agreement and urged Russia "to end support for separatists and to withdraw forces and military equipment from eastern Ukraine." Russia has denied supplying the separatists with troops and weapons The withdrawal from Debaltseve attracted fierce criticism from Ukrainian nationalist politicians "We had enough forces and means," he said "The problem is the command and coordination Some retreating troops said Wednesday they had not received any reinforcements in Debaltseve from the government and had been walking for a whole day One Ukrainian soldier who introduced himself only as Nikolai said he was not even sure if his unit was retreating or being rotated elsewhere Our commanders didn't tell us whether it's a retreat or just a rotation," he said "They just told us to change our positions because our unit had been staying there for quite a long time and we had sustained quite big losses." At a barricade outside the town of Vuhlehirsk reporters were barred from the road into Debaltseve by a group of fighters Some of the men identified themselves as coming from Russia's Far East and bore the Asiatic features typical of native people there said Ukrainian forces appeared to have run out of ammunition and food "We have heard that they are calling their relatives and friends from within the encirclement and saying to them: 'Please help us because they are killing us and destroying us,'" Ponosov said Germany and France who negotiated the cease-fire deal that was supposed to take effect Sunday were expected to talk about its implementation later Wednesday EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini accused the rebels in Debaltseve of acting "in clear violation of the cease-fire." "Russia and the separatists have to immediately and fully implement the commitments agreed to in Minsk in line with yesterday's UN Security Council resolution starting with the respect of the cease-fire and the withdrawal of all heavy weapons," Mogherini said in a statement Wednesday the German government also condemned rebels' advance on Debaltseve Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert described the onslaught as "a serious strain on the [Minsk cease-fire] agreement as well as hopes for peace in eastern Ukraine." rebel leaders said they had begun withdrawing heavy weaponry Wednesday from parts of the front line where the cease-fire was holding "This is the first step," Basurin said "We're not waiting for Ukraine to start pulling back the weaponry together with us." have been blocked from Debaltseve by the rebels for days The separatists' Donetsk News Agency quoted rebel official Maxim Leshchenko as saying the OSCE will be allowed to visit "soon." Ukraine | A cease-fire that went into effect Sunday in eastern Ukraine appeared largely to be holding although continued fighting over a bitterly contested railway hub is threatening to upend the delicate settlement who last week brokered a deal to try to end the conflict that has raged since April agreed in a conference call Sunday that hostilities should also cease around the government-held town of Debaltseve Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office said armed separatists appeared intent to pursue their claim to the town Heavy fog shrouding sodden fields muffled the sound of artillery but regular shelling could still be heard from Luhanske a town about 15 kilometers (9 miles) to northwest of Debaltseve and over 80 kilometers west of the city Luhansk Associated Press journalists were blocked from moving closer by Ukrainian troops The cease-fire has kindled slender hopes of a reprieve from a conflict that has claimed more than 5,300 lives Withdrawal of heavy armor from the front line by both sides is scheduled to begin Monday Attention will be focused in the coming days on Debaltseve where Ukrainian forces have been fending off severe onslaughts from the rebels for weeks The town is a railway link between the main separatist-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk The diminution in hostilities was agreed after a marathon session of diplomacy that brought together Poroshenko German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French leader Francois Hollande for talks in the capital of Belarus the leaders agreed the cease-fire should extend to Debaltseve according to a statement from Poroshenko's office That flies in the face of the position taken by rebels who argue they should be granted immediate control over the town as it is entirely surrounded by their forces Separatist officials have said any force adopted against Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve would accordingly not violate the Minsk agreement As he issued the cease-fire order at one minute after midnight Kiev time Sunday (2201 GMT Poroshenko had said the road to the town remained open and that Ukrainian troops there had been resupplied with ammunition Merkel's office said that the call's participants welcomed the general acceptance of the truce but were concerned about continuing combat operations "They showed determination to work toward a full implementation of the true Tuesday's agreed on withdrawal of heavy arms had to be started," the statement said The offices of both Merkel and Hollande said the leaders involved in Sunday's call also expressed joint support for adopting a United Nations Security Council resolution codifying the measures adopted in Minsk A statement from the Kremlin confirmed they discussed the difficult situation in Debaltseve and also the role of the OSCE in monitoring the cease-fire Under the deal hammered out at last week's negotiations the progress of the cease-fire is to be monitored by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that the organization has dispatched 20 patrols to monitor the state of the cease-fire "We made an attempt to send our monitors to Debaltseve however our patrol has been refused access by the so-called DPR," Apakan said using the acronym for the Donetsk People's Republic separatist movement Apakan said the cease-fire was being respected on the whole barring some isolated instances A spokesman for the Ukrainian army general staff said during a morning briefing that shelling was noted 10 times with all but one incident occurring in the Debaltseve area said Sunday that nine Ukrainian troops had died over the previous day's unrest The rebels have in turn accused the Ukrainians of deploying artillery in the Debaltseve area shortly after midnight At an army checkpoint along the road to Debaltseve a commander said Sunday the shelling appeared to have come from an area beyond Debaltseve controlled by "gangs other than the Russians and the separatists said these forces "submitted to no authority." was quiet Sunday morning with no shelling from government forces two civilians were killed shortly after midnight in the government-controlled town of Popasne as a result of shelling only a few kilometers (a mile or two) from the nearest separatist positions Luhansk Governor Hennadiy Moskal said in a statement "The owners of the house — an 87-year-old man and a 67-year-old woman — died under the ruins," Moskal said The hours before the cease-fire were marked by ferocious battles around Debaltseve as Ukrainian armed forces undertook desperate attempts to gain control over a highway linking the town to their rearguard State Department said satellite images from eastern Ukraine offer "credible pieces of evidence" that the Russian military has deployed larger amounts of artillery and multiple rocket launchers around Debaltseve to shell Ukrainian forces The images could not immediately be verified Russia has repeatedly denied Western claims that it has sent troops and equipment to aid the rebels Cessation of hostilities is only the first in a series of planned steps agreed to in Minsk Withdrawals of heavy weaponry from the front line creating a zone roughly 50-140 kilometers (30-85 miles) wide are to begin Monday and be completed in two weeks No provisions are envisioned for the withdrawal of troops The peace plan also requires the Ukrainian government to resume paying pensions and state benefits to citizens in rebel-held territory Ukraine's financial blockade against the rebels has led to a catastrophic collapse in living standards in eastern Ukraine depriving the poorest of any immediate means of support Maxim Tucker is a Ukraine-based journalist reporting for Newsweek, The Times and the BBC. The former news editor of the Kyiv Post he previously worked as Amnesty International's Campaigner on Ukraine and the South Caucasus and has spent most of the past six years working on and in the former Soviet Union A column of Ukrainian troop trucks rumbled across the frozen their drivers strained to see through mud-spattered windscreens in the early morning light Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers had started their retreat from the besieged city of Debaltseve in the dead of night on 18 February but the rising sun was making the trucks and their trails increasingly obvious As they left the strategic rail and road junction the soldiers didn't know where the Russian forces and their separatist allies were Vehicles started peeling off from the column across the fields metal-clad shapes loomed on a snow-capped ridge ahead Within moments tank rounds and rocket-propelled grenades had ripped into three of the trucks explosions sending their human cargo sprawling and shattered into the field.Machine gunfire clattered into the engine block of the last vehicle spilled out of the truck with another medic and a handful of soldiers scrambling through the snow and firing bursts of his Kalashnikov at a distant hedgerow "There were casualties scattered across the field," he says but there were another 12 to 15 wounded left in the snow and probably a few dozen dead guys." As artillery shells and small arms fire tore into the earth around them Sardarian and what was left of his detachment were forced to sprint 500 metres across open ground leaving the wounded and their missing limbs behind in the hope that the next withdrawing convoy would have enough vehicles intact to pick them up the cold and the terror had a numbing effect you could only see field and didn't know what was where I could just see the direction people are running in He was one of 2,130 soldiers Ukraine says it was able to pull out of Debaltseve alive and unharmed Hundreds of other government soldiers trying to leave the town bombarded by Russian artillery almost constantly and gradually encircled over three weeks Official government figures claim only 22 soldiers were killed in a "well-organised withdrawal" Withdrawing soldiers say the retreat was in shambles Returning to Artemivsk after 10 days trapped in Debaltseve Sardarian was greeted by his euphoric mother Alla For the past two weeks she had waited anxiously for her son to return from what should have been a 12-hour rotation He had become trapped in the city when his unit had moved up to Ukrainian positions to stabilise and evacuate casualties on 5 February seized the village of Lohvynove to cut off the only road in and out of town He realised his predicament in one of the most painful ways possible "One of the casualties was very heavily wounded so we decided to send our last ambulance with a bunch of the injured commanders from another unit turned up and asked where the casualties were When Sardarian explained they had gone back to Artemivsk but probably they are dead now," he shrugs His thick dark beard and his jet-black hair had grown longer during his time in Debaltseve his voice a little quieter than when he was first interviewed by Newsweek several weeks ago Even back then it was clear Sardarian would bear the psychological scars of a deeply traumatic year with him for life Born just months after the formation of the 23-year-old country he is now fighting to defend he has already lived through the most violent episodes of Ukraine's brief history as an independent nation When Kyivans first took to the streets to protest then-president Viktor Yanukovych's decision to abandon an association agreement with the European Union in November 2013 at the time he was finishing his masters degree in Warsaw He joined the Euromaidan protests while on vacation in December In January 2014 police attempts to disperse the protesters grew more violent Yanukovych rushed through a series of repressive laws in a last-ditch bid to quash the protest movement hurled cobblestones and Molotov cocktails at police from behind flaming tyre barricades Police returned fire first with rubber bullets When three activists were shot dead by police snipers on 22 January "At that moment I understood that if we do nothing those guys will stay in the cabinet and we will have no laws joining its student assembly and helping out at various medical points around the square At around 6am on the morning of 19 February he offered to help out at one of the makeshift hospitals in a nearby church "I didn't know in the morning there would be shooting Special forces loyal to Yanukovych fired live ammunition into ranks of protesters predominantly armed with sticks and wooden shields A handful fired back with the odd shotgun or hunting rifle Other snipers fired from a position on the top of the enormous Soviet-styled Hotel Ukraine Suddenly the Maidan was overflowing with casualties of all ages and genders but mostly I was carrying people and equipment." Shocked by the bloodshed and pressured by international interlocutors he hastily fled his extravagant mansion complex by helicopter on 22 February by the time he left 106 people had been killed At least 1,000 people were seriously injured not a single official has been convicted and jailed for the attacks The country's justice system remains unreformed Sardarian and his fellow demonstrators felt that they had won they had an opportunity to rebuild a completely corrupted Ukrainian bureaucracy "Honestly I thought they would stop in Crimea," Alik reflects "But I did think it may become a big problem." But Russian aggression didn't stop in Crimea It extended well into Ukraine's easternmost regions with Russian intelligence and special forces fomenting unrest arming and equipping enemies of the new Kyiv government just as Ukraine looked to have gained the upper hand over the separatists Russia sent in regular troops to bolster its proxies I decided to volunteer for the national guard," Alik says "It was hard to make myself understand that I would take a gun During training by mysterious former members of UK and US special forces he realised he had no appetite for shooting But in Ukraine's desperately ill-equipped medical units "It's tough to see young guys dying or heavily wounded And it's strange when you are helping a guy that is seriously injured While Western officials puzzle over Vladimir Putin's real ambitions in Ukraine and ponder how far he is willing to go Sardarian believes the answer is straightforward: the paralysis of a generation of young reformers to preserve Ukraine's kleptocratic oligarchy One condition was for them to put financial reports on the internet We succeeded – now they do it everyday two of the guys that occupied the ministry with me are fighting here Imagine what kind of county we could build if there was no war Russian president said to have wanted to delay truce by 10 days in order to force surrender of Ukrainian troops at key rail hub The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, sought to delay agreement on a Ukrainian ceasefire at talks in Minsk because he wanted pro-Russia separatists to capture the eastern railway hub of Debaltseve, an EU summit has been told. Three of the four leaders at the talks in Minsk – the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, France’s president, François Hollande, and Ukraine’s embattled president, Petro Poroshenko – dashed to the Brussels summit directly from Belarus. Briefing 26 other EU heads of government on the fraught negotiations that resulted in a truce supposed to start on Sunday, the Minsk participants painted a picture that failed to inspire confidence. Witnesses to the discussion said all the EU leaders were sceptical about the success of the Minsk peace plan, not least because Putin had resisted pressure for a ceasefire. He hoped to delay the truce by 10 days, the summit heard, in order to force the surrender of up to 8,000 Ukrainian troops who are surrounded in Debaltseve by pro-Russia separatists. Read morePutin was said to have made it clear that Debaltseve had to fall Putin also said the separatists had the Ukrainian forces encircled and that “of course they expect [the Ukrainians] to lay down their arms and cease resistance” While the 13-point peace plan is complex and looks to political developments at least a year away Poroshenko’s absolute priority was to get a ceasefire The Ukrainian leader delivered an emotional report to the summit on the plight of eastern Ukraine he went to a hospital in the eastern town of Kramatorsk where he was deeply affected by the sight of a four-year-old boy who had lost limbs in a shelling by separatist forces with the leaders concluding that Putin was more interested in war than in peace “I don’t want anyone to have any illusions and so I am not seen as a naive person: we are still a very long way from peace,” he said during a visit to a military training ground “Nobody has a strong belief that the peace conditions which were signed in Minsk will be implemented strictly.” There was fierce fighting across eastern Ukraine on Friday with both sides accusing the other of killing civilians Two people were killed and six wounded when a shell hit a packed cafe in the Kiev-controlled town of Shchastya near rebel-held Luhansk adding that other shells had struck elsewhere in the town The rebels accused Ukrainian forces of shelling the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and the town of Horlivka where they said three children had been killed It was not possible to verify either of these reports though an AFP journalist in Donetsk said sporadic missile salvoes and dozens of artillery bombardments could be heard from the city starting early on Friday morning The Ukrainian military said 11 soldiers had been killed and 40 wounded in the past 24 hours and that rebels had built up their forces across separatist-held zones The enemy shelled positions of the ‘anti-terrorist operation’ forces with the same intensity as before,” a statement by the Ukrainian military said Fighting had been particularly intense around Debaltseve where separatists had used rockets and artillery to attack government forces The ceasefire agreed in Minsk was intended to pave the way for a comprehensive political settlement of the country’s crisis and followed a fraught 16 hours of overnight negotiations. The summit resulted in a pact providing for a ceasefire between Ukrainian government troops and Russia-backed separatists, a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the battle zone that is to be demilitarised, amnesties on both sides and exchanges of prisoners and hostages. Read moreThe ceasefire and weapons pullback is to be monitored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) “The next 48 hours will be crucial,” said one EU diplomat at the Brussels summit Merkel cautioned against over-optimism after Minsk and was guarded about whether the peace pact would be observed and implemented “We have a glimmer of hope … but no illusions,” she said Depending on how events play out in eastern Ukraine in the weeks ahead EU leaders are expected to decide whether to reinforce or relax economic sanctions on Russia next month US officials also said they were not taking sanctions off the table and bluntly warned the separatists against seizing more land before Sunday’s ceasefire formally takes effect likewise urged EU leaders to stand firm on maintaining sanctions against Russia saying it was “actions on the ground rather than just words on a piece of paper” that mattered If the early peacemaking measures take effect they are to be followed by more ambitious political moves aimed at an overall political settlement by the end of the year when Ukraine is supposed to have a new constitution the rebel-held areas are to be granted decentralised “special status” and cross-border links with Russia local elections are to be held in the breakaway areas while Kiev is also slated to take control of the border with Russia The US said success of the agreement would hinge on whether the Kiev government was able to restore control of its border with Russia the government in Kiev may only secure its own border with Russia with the agreement of the separatists This was a demand that the rebel leaders tabled earlier in the week in the preparations for the summit Germany and France spent 17 hours last week negotiating an agreement aimed at stopping the fighting in eastern Ukraine and paving the way for a future fundamental settlement of the crisis there was one key issue they failed to agree on This was the question of the ongoing fighting around Debaltseve a key railway junction where thousands of Ukrainian troops appeared last week to be encircled by pro-Russian insurgents After numerous skirmishes in the past few days that have led to hundreds of lives being lost Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced Wednesday that the Ukrainian army was retreating from the area while continuing to insist that the army had never been encircled and that the area had been under its control His statements were undermined by photographs and reports flooding out of the area of Ukrainian soldiers being attacked even as they were attempting to leave Journalists and military advisers in the area reported that the entire Debaltseve area was burning prompting comparisons to the desperate battle for the city of Stalingrad during World War II Poroshenko said that 80 percent of forces had already withdrawn with their weapons and another two columns were expected to leave according to a statement published on the presidential website In a conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday Poroshenko said the failure to observe the cease-fire around Debaltseve was a "cynical attack on the Minsk agreements."   leader of the self-proclaimed separatist Donetsk People's Republic told BBC News over the weekend that "there isn't a word about Debaltseve in the Minsk agreements "This means that Ukraine simply betrayed the 5,000 people encircled there," he said It is not yet clear how many soldiers have perished in the bitter fight for Debaltseve but the number is in the hundreds raising the question of why the issue could not have been settled in the Minsk agreement According to President Vladimir Putin Ukrainian troops were already surrounded in the Debaltseve area before the Minsk talks last week "I spoke about this at the meeting in Minsk," Putin told journalists during a Tuesday visit to Hungary "I said that the surrounded troops would try to break through and that the militia who had got the Ukrainian troops surrounded would resist these attempts and try to keep the encirclement in place and this would inevitably lead to further clashes," he said Putin said that the Minsk agreement "offers an opportunity" for the peaceful resolution of the conflict and that it "could be cemented by a resolution by the UN Security Council." a long-time Kremlin pool journalist who has followed Putin closely wrote in the Kommersant business daily on Friday that the Debaltseve issue was the main point of contention during the Minsk talks and was discussed for as long as eight hours Putin said that Ukrainian army soldiers were encircled in Debaltseve and that this could threaten the cease-fire agreement while Poroshenko denied that they were encircled Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that the demarcation line from which Ukrainian forces were due to withdraw under the Minsk agreement was set at the front line of fighting meaning Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve were effectively left inside rebel territory He echoed Putin's words that concerns had been raised over this during the Minsk negotiations "Poroshenko said [in Minsk] that there was no problem with Debaltseve that there was no encirclement," Lavrov told journalists in Moscow a military expert from the Institute for Political and Military Analysis said that the Minsk agreement was "meaningless" because it did did not settle the Debaltseve situation "Poroshenko could not give it up because he would have been torn apart in Kiev," he said in a phone interview Khramchikhin said that the fact that Putin German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande had not signed anything will allow them to relinquish responsibility for the breakdown of the agreement director of the Center of Social and Political Sciences in Moscow said that with or without the Minsk agreements after the Ukrainian army withdraws from Debaltseve there will be several months of relative calm the Ukrainian army needs to restore its ability to fight which will take two to three months," Yevseyev said in a phone interview Yevseyev compared the Debaltseve situation with the August battle for the city of Ilovaisk when the Ukrainian army was encircled and hundreds of its troops killed "The new cease-fire will be similar to the one we observed after the first Minsk talks [in September] it will last until the Ukrainian army regains strength," he said "In order for a proper truce to be achieved there a fully demilitarized zone has to be created with at least 20,000 UN peacemakers deployed who will control how it is observed," he said 30 (UPI) -- The strategic town of Debaltseve was under heavy tank and artillery fire Friday from Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists "We do not see the slightest signs of Kiev's willingness to stop the hostilities to engage in dialogue with the opposing part of the population in eastern Ukraine or to begin the process of political settlement," he said Thursday Subscribe to BuzzFeed Daily NewsletterCaret DownHorrific Images Capture The Sheer Brutality Of War In UkrainePhotographer Max Avdeev embeds with the rebel fighters known as the First Slavyansk Brigade in Logvinove to capture the horrific sights of conflict for BuzzFeed News Warning: Several of the images in this gallery are NSFW and extremely graphic by Max SeddonBuzzFeed News World Correspondent Ukraine — When Russian-backed rebels went on the offensive in east Ukraine a month ago the focal point of the clashes quickly switched to Debaltseve a strategically key rail junction linking their two unsanctioned states Ukraine's government denied rebel claims to have the town surrounded even as artillery fire prompted most civilians to flee rebels seized most of the town and took several Ukrainian soldiers captive A catastrophic defeat is now all but inevitable photographer Max Avdeev embedded with the First Slavyansk Brigade of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in the nearby town of Logvinove cutting Debaltseve off from the last road leading to Ukrainian territory though their commanding officers were Russian — as were the men who delivered them tanks and artillery As the deadline for a new cease-fire deal came and went overnight on Sunday and now they've come back to fight with us again Now we're not going to let anyone out," said Sergei a rebel commander whose nom de guerre is "Kunduz." "As soon as our enemy started to run out of breath Max SeddonBuzzFeed News World Correspondent Neither side seems to expect an end to the conflict and both were trying to shore up their positions before the deadline Fighting between government and rebel forces in eastern Ukraine trailed off in the first hours after a midnight ceasefire began – but steady shelling resumed later in the morning near the besieged city of Debaltseve. Kiev and the breakaway republics in the east said fighting had quietened and the ceasefire was mostly being observed. But the Guardian heard mortar fire to the east of Luhanske on the highway to Debaltseve, where up to 8,000 Ukrainian troops have been under rebel attack for weeks. The UN security council was convening an emergency session on Sunday to hear a Russian resolution on the conflict in eastern Ukraine. South of Luhanske is a 10-mile stretch of road that is often shelled by rebels and is reportedly mined, largely cutting off Debaltseve from the rest of the Ukrainian forces. Further north on the highway a destroyed troop transport truck was still smoking on Sunday morning. Soldiers at the last checkpoint in Luhanske said the guns had gone quiet after the midnight ceasefire, but shelling of Ukrainian positions in the area had resumed around 6am – a report confirmed by the press service of Kiev’s “anti-terrorist operation”. “There’s no ceasefire here,” said a Ukrainian soldier who would give only his first name, Andrei. “It’s a present from Putin,” joked another soldier, gesturing in the direction of the shelling. The soldiers said Ukrainian forces were not shooting back, but some of the shelling to the east of Luhanske sounded like outgoing fire. Ukrainian army command said its forces were observing the ceasefire but would return fire if attacked or if the rebels shelled residential areas. The self-proclaimed breakaway “Donetsk People’s Republic” said Ukrainian forces had shelled two rebel-controlled areas from machine guns and multiple rocket launchers shortly after 1am. After the peace plan negotiations in Minsk, Russian president, Vladimir Putin, suggested Ukrainian forces were surrounded and should give up the city, but Kiev has rejected this idea, and rebel leaders have denied carrying out negotiations to create a “green corridor” for the troops to leave. Andrei showed the Guardian a text message telling Ukrainian troops they had been betrayed and wouldn’t be killed if they surrendered to rebels, which he said had been sent en masse to phones in the area near Debaltseve. Ukrainian ambassador-at-large Dmytro Kuleba said the ceasefire had been occasionally violated during the night, but Kiev was ready to withdraw heavy weapons if the rebels did the same. “Debaltseve is and will remain one of the hottest spots,” Kuleba said. “In general, the truce is being observed here, but we expect that it will be the critical place in terms of facilitating a real ceasefire.” The philosophy that the opposing sides could respond if attacked, a formula that led to the complete disintegration of the fraught ceasefire declared in September, was still in effect. The opposing sides were reportedly using the ceasefire to strengthen their positions. Three trucks of Ukrainian soldiers in full battle gear were waiting on the highway leading to Luhanske, and a squad commander from a nearby volunteer battalion admitted Ukrainian forces were reinforcing their positions toward Debaltseve. Ukrainian soldiers said their positions in the village of Zolote in the Luhansk region had been shelled in the small hours of the morning. According to Luhansk governor, Gennady Moskal, fighting had quieted in his region, but a “complete ceasefire has not happened” and active fighting was continuing in a few areas. The government-controlled town of Popasna was attacked with Grad rockets, killing an elderly couple whose their house collapsed on them, he said. The Azov volunteer battalion said fighting had continued on a second major front near the coastal city of Mariupol, where 50 men from the battalion were injured and three killed on Saturday fighting for the town of Shirokine between government-controlled Mariupol and rebel forces near the Russian border. The Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, had issued the order for the country’s armed forces to hold their fire in a live midnight broadcast. Read moreIn a statement before issuing that order Poroshenko expressed concern over risks to the ceasefire posed by the unrest that raged on Saturday around Debaltseve Rebels said they would not consider any battles for the town to be a violation of the ceasefire Russia and Ukraine had backed the truce as part of a peace plan agreed in Minsk on Thursday but fighting escalated in the hours before it came into effect Putin and Russia-backed rebels had bargained for a “preparatory delay” rather than an immediate ceasefire The opposing sides were apparently spending the extra time solidifying positions on two main fronts along the Azov Sea coast near Mariupol and around the city of Debaltseve which fighters have compared to the second world war battle of Stalingrad but hold strategic value for the Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway republics Political statements in the runup to the ceasefire suggested neither Kiev nor Moscow fully expected fighting to cease. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia could not affect developments on the ground, reiterating the Kremlin’s claim that it was not a party to the conflict despite overwhelming evidence that Russian armour and troops have been in Ukraine. British equipment is now also reportedly in Ukraine after a private firm sold 20 decommissioned British army Saxon armoured vehicles to Kiev. Read moreKiev also seemed to be bracing itself for continued clashes he would declare a state of martial law across the country Kiev has previously refrained from doing so for fear that it would not only cause discontent among the population but also give Moscow an excuse to escalate tensions In a telephone call with Poroshenko hours before the start of the ceasefire US president Barack Obama expressed his “deep concern about the ongoing violence The White House said in a statement that the two leaders “emphasised the pressing need” for all parties to implement the ceasefire and agreed to remain in contact in the coming days Obama also spoke with German chancellor Angela Merkel who took a lead role in negotiating the ceasefire agreement urging full implementation of the Minsk agreements statements by separatist officials cast doubt on whether fighting would end at the appointed hour was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying his fighters would not allow Ukrainian forces to escape Debaltseve Separatists have said the Ukrainian troops there would be offered only the opportunity to surrender Many fighters and civilians in eastern Ukraine do not believe the truce can last since they have already seen ceasefires declared in June and September fail as the opposing sides continued fighting The Ukrainian military said 11 soldiers had been killed and 40 wounded on Friday and seven killed and 23 wounded on Saturday rebels have been attempting to cut off Debaltseve and seize it from the reported 8,000 Ukrainian troops defending the city Putin suggested it was fully surrounded and Ukrainian forces should agree to abandon it but Kiev has insisted that it is not cut off and will remain government territory Although rebels have been able to virtually surround Debaltseve and pound it with rockets and artillery the road connecting the city with Ukrainian forces in Artemivsk is not fully under either side’s control Pro-Russia forces shelled the city 15 times and attempted to storm it early on Saturday The body of a Ukrainian soldier killed in fighting is brought into the morgue on 14 February in Artemivsk Photograph: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images“Fighters are destroying the city of Debaltseve,” regional police head Vyacheslav Abroskin wrote on his Facebook page “There is incessant shelling of civilian homes and buildings A Grad [rocket] scored a direct hit on the police station.” a national guard squad commander with the call-sign Orest said his unit had arrived from the northern city of Kharkiv to reinforce troops pinned down in the besieged city where the fighting “makes Stalingrad look tame,” he said Ukrainian Grad rocket launchers boomed in the distance They had not been able to get through to Debaltseve due to intense shelling and machine-gun fire further down the highway a Grad rocket launcher sped back toward Artemivsk Members of the national guard medical unit in Artemivsk said they were preparing ambulances to go to Debaltseve if the ceasefire allowed them to get through They had 30 cots laid out in a former clinic ready to take in wounded soldiers Drivers were last able to take ambulances through on Thursday and at least one medic had been killed and one captured in recent days commander of the main national guard medical squad in Artemivsk On Saturday, a military ambulance delivered the body of a soldier killed in the village of Paschnya, which is in the no-man’s land between Luhanske and Debaltseve, to the mortuary in Artemivsk. The medic, who declined to give his name, said it was the third dead man he had delivered in 24 hours. Many more dead and wounded were trapped in Debaltseve, he said. “The fighting has got worse, a lot worse, over the past two to three days,” he said, wiping his hands on his bloody flak jacket. “We can only get to the outskirts of Debaltseve, then they start shelling and we can’t get through.” Kiev has been waging what Poroshenko said was a counter-offensive meant to move the demarcation line near Mariupol back to where it was in September The Azov volunteer battalion fighting there reported that Shirokine had been almost destroyed in tank battles and artillery and rocket attacks populated areas on both sides of the frontlines have been suffering attacks in recent days At least a dozen civilians were killed on Friday as shelling hit the government-controlled towns of Gornyak and Schastye and the rebel-controlled cities of Horlivka and Donetsk What appeared to be a rocket attack struck the town of Svitlodarsk near the Ukrainian lines while the Observer was there on Friday a shopkeeper whose store was hit by a shell on Monday said she did not believe the ceasefire would last She sleeps on a makeshift cot in the back room over her store “I’m not going to do major renovations; they’ll just bomb it again,” she said before running into the back room as incoming rockets whined overhead Kerry also expressed concern to Lavrov about the fierce fighting around the town of Debaltseve and efforts by Russia and the separatists to cut off the town in advance of the ceasefire a senior US State Department official said This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025 The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media A member of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic looks on near a building destroyed during battles with the Ukrainian armed forces in the town of Vuhlehirsk in Donetsk Pro-Russian rebels appeared to be in full control on Wednesday of the town that has been a principal target of their advance as they attempt to surround a nearby garrison of Ukrainian forces The apparent fall of Vuhlehirsk would be a setback for Kiev which has been trying to defend it and the larger neighbouring town of Debaltseve the covered body of a member of the armed forces of the separatists who was killed in battle with the Ukrainian armed forces has been one of the main targets of the rebel advance sitting in a pocket of government-held territory surrounded on three sides by rebel territory and straddling road and rail routes linking major rebel strongholds some gathered above near a burnt armoured vehicle to make the cities they control more secure and push back government artillery which had been killing civilians Ukraine says its military is outgunned by the heavy weaponry rebels have received from Russia But the prospect of new arms arriving from the United States raises the risk of escalating the war Fighting in a war which has already killed more than 5,000 people has reached an intensity unseen since before a ceasefire in September An attempt to revive peace talks collapsed on Saturday Ukrainian forces are still holed up in neighbouring Debaltseve a major rail town of about three times the size and an important stopping point for goods traffic by rail from Russia Taking the two would link up the main rebel strongholds of Luhansk and Donetsk Convoys of buses carrying many local residents to safety left the besieged town of Debaltseve in eastern Ukraine on Friday as government forces kept up artillery fire to defend their positions against pro-Russian separatists to board and leave the town either to Ukrainian or rebel-held territory An estimated 3,000 people still remained in the town which had a population of around 25,000 before the conflict Ukrainian servicemen keep watch at no-man's land outside Debaltseve A member of the armed forces of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic walks near a burnt tank turret in Vuhlehirsk A municipal official looks through the window of a residential block which was damaged by a shelling according to locals which was damaged by shelling in central Donetsk Men remove a broken window near the body of a victim of shelling Wrapped bodies of shelling victims are loaded into a vehicle in Donetsk A woman reacts as she stands near a multi-storey block of flats damaged by shelling in Yenakieve town A man stands in a flat at a residential block damaged by recent shelling in Yenakieve town Local residents gather inside a bomb shelter in Debaltseve A local resident cooks outside her house as children play nearby in Debaltseve A member of the Ukrainian armed forces offers local residents to join people who are boarding a bus and fleeing from military conflict in Debaltseve A woman cries as she flees the conflict in Debaltseve Local residents wait to board a bus to flee the conflict in Debaltseve Local residents flee the conflict in Debaltseve