US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday said Russian troops were beginning to pull back from Ukraine, but warned that Moscow still needed to do more to see sanctions eased, as deadly shelling continued to undermine a fragile ceasefire.
Following more than three hours of talks with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, Kerry laid down a series of conditions to lift sanctions over the crisis that has brought relations between the two to their lowest ebb since the Cold War.
“And at this point... many of them are happening now. The troops are pulling back, [but] the heavy equipment still has to be pulled back and the border is yet to be properly monitored and secured,” Kerry told reporters in Paris.
Photo: EPA
Russian President Vladimir Putin — due to meet Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Milan tomorrow — on Sunday called back from the Ukrainian border 17,600 soldiers he had stationed there when Kiev’s forces were making their most significant gains this summer.
Despite the tentative signs of progress in the months-old conflict that has claimed 3,400 lives, Ukrainian officials continued to talk tough, with the new defense minister vowing to build an army capable of withstanding Russian aggression.
Lawmakers confirmed new Ukrainian Minister of Defense Stepan Poltorak, one of Ukraine’s most respected soldiers and former National Guard head, in a 245-1 vote earlier on Tuesday.
Poltorak told lawmakers in a brief, but combative, address that his top priority was building a reliable defense against Russia through a new army that Kiev hopes to equip with NATO weapons.
“Ukraine needs peace, and only a modern, well-trained and well-supplied mobile armed forces can guarantee this peace,” the 49-year-old career military man said.
The size of the task before him was underscored by renewed violence in the southern port city of Mariupol, where shelling killed seven people in a funeral procession.
Kiev defense officials said the deadliest day since the ceasefire agreement on Sept. 5 also saw seven troops lose their lives in sporadic attacks.
The crisis has seen the West impose a series of sanctions on Russia. However, Lavrov said they were backfiring, eroding hopes of an economic recovery in Europe, and straining Washington’s own ties with Brussels.
“We do not know who is losing out more in economic terms: Russia or the European Union,” Lavrov said shortly before flying to Paris.
Speaking to reporters after his meeting with Kerry, Lavrov called on “all parties to respect” the ceasefire agreement and urged “the relaunch of political dialogue.”
Kiev and its Western allies accuse Russia of fomenting the chaos in eastern Ukraine and covertly sending in special forces to pay back Ukraine’s new leaders for their February ouster of a Kremlin-backed president.
A sense of public disbelief and fury at the mounting death toll and the humiliating performance of Ukraine’s once-proud armed forces has set the backdrop for a crucial general election at the end of the month.
Poroshenko will rely on Poltorak to instill confidence in a demoralized military that has lost about 1,000 soldiers in its campaign to quash pro-Russian guerrillas in the economically vital rustbelt.
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