Ukraine peace talks begin as rebel fighting rages

A woman surveys damage done to a house, which according to locals was recently damaged by shelling, in the suburbs of Donetsk

Andrei Makhovsky and Richard Balmforth

A new round of peace talks got under way involving Ukraine and separatists yesterday, even as fighting between Kiev government forces and the Russian-backed rebels raged in Ukraine’s east, claiming civilian and military lives.

The main members of the so-called contact group — Ukrainian former president Leonid Kuchma, a Russian diplomat and an Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe official — met at a state residence in the Belarussian capital Minsk, where they were joined by two separatist officials. The sides have held only one inconclusive meeting since agreeing a ceasefire last September as part of a 12-point blueprint for peace. Much-violated from the start, that truce collapsed completely with a new rebel advance last week. Both sides have accused each other of deadly artillery and mortar strikes on civilian targets in the past two weeks, including on a cultural centre in the main regional city of Donetsk on Friday which killed at least five people waiting for humanitarian hand-outs.

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