(MENAFN- Arab Times) Russia wants the leaders of Germany and France to put more pressure on Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to implement a February peace plan for east Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday. Poroshenko will meet German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande in Berlin on Monday in a bid to end a new wave of violence in east Ukraine between Russian-backed rebels and Ukraine's armed forces. Kiev blames the rebels for violating a shaky truce. The West says Moscow has been driving the rebellion there since April, 2014, feeding it with serving Russian troops, arms, intelligence and funds. Moscow denies that.
"It is necessary in our view to mount additional pressure on Kiev to convince them that they have to implement the agreements and obligations agreed in Minsk," Lavrov said in referring to the peace deal brokered by Germany and France. He was speaking during a visit to Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula annexed by Moscow from Kiev in March 2014, before unrest spread to east Ukraine. "We expect that on Aug 24 ". Germany and France, who are the guarantors of the implementation of the Minsk agreement, will do everything to ensure it is carried out in full," Lavrov said. Moscow says Kiev has failed to deliver on multiple provisions of the peace plan, signed in Minsk in February, and that the Ukrainian authorities must hold direct talks with representatives of the self-proclaimed rebel "republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are backed by Russia.
Meanwhile, Germany said Wednesday it could not rule out Russian President Vladimir Putin would take part in a future round of talks over conflict-torn eastern Ukraine after speculation that Western leaders were snubbing him. Chancellor Angela Merkel is hosting talks with France's President Francois Hollande and Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko on Monday, and analysts said the conspicuous absence of Putin underlined that relations were deteriorating as new violence flares in eastern Ukraine. The four leaders last met in Minsk in February when a truce deal was signed, but they have also regularly held telephone conversations over the conflict.
Merkel's spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said Wednesday that although Putin would not join the huddle in Berlin, it was possible that the Russian strongman could attend future talks. "I cannot rule out that such a meeting would be held but I cannot confirm it," Wirtz told reporters. Violence in eastern Ukraine this week has sparked a new diplomatic flareup between Moscow - accused by the West of aiding and abetting Ukraine's pro-Russia rebels - and Western powers which want to prop up Kiev's new pro-European leaders against what they view as Russian aggression.
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VIENNA: OSCE observers in eastern Ukraine have faced "unprecedented" harassment during the recent spike in violence, mostly from Russian-backed rebels, the chief OSCE monitor said Wednesday. The mission's "security has been challenged at an unprecedented level. Our patrols have come under fire, including from heavy weapons," Ertugrul Apakan said at Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe headquarters in Vienna. "Monitors have been harassed, guns have been pointed at them," the Turkish diplomat in charge of the more than 400-strong OSCE mission monitoring the 16-month-old conflict told a news conference.
"These incidents have been on both sides of the contact line, but mostly in the rebel side, particularly this harassment," he said. He said the "highest point" was an arson attack on four OSCE vehicles on the night of August 8 in the rebels' defacto capital Donetsk, saying it "likely was a direct attack against the mission, to undermine its operations." He also said that jamming of OSCE drones has "increased" in recent weeks. The Western-backed Kiev government and the insurgents on Monday reported the deaths of at lest 10 soldiers and civilians - a dramatic escalation that sparked international condemnation and marked the worst bloodshed in more than a month.
Monday's clashes were the culmination of days of restlessness that saw the number of rocket and heavy artillery fire exchanges climb to levels not recorded since the signing of a very loosely observed February armistice. Apakan said that the OSCE has observed "more, and more serious fighting" Ceasefire violations have become more frequent and more severe." He also warned of a "worrying" deterioration of the humanitarian situation. Russian President Vladimir Putin pinned the upsurge on alleged preparations by Kiev to grab back territories it had lost in the course of the war that has claimed more than 6,500 lives.
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MOSCOW: Russian prosecutors on Wednesday demanded that Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov be jailed for 23 years on terror charges, in a trial decried by the West. Sentsov and another Ukrainian from Crimea, Alexander Kolchenko, have been held since May 2014 are accused of setting a pro-Kremlin party office on fire and wanting to blow up a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Crimea's main city Simferopol. Prosecutors also asked the court to jail Kolchenko, a pro-Kiev activist in Crimea who opposed the peninsula's annexation by Moscow last year, for 12 years. Supporters of the two men, who are being tried as Russians despite never applying for Russian citizenship, say the case against them has been fabricated, and both the European Union and the United States have called for their release. Acclaimed filmmakers from across the globe have written to Russian President Vladimir Putin expressing concern over the prosecution of Sentsov, an up-and-coming director.
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