Four-way phone call between leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia comes after withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from Debaltseve

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The leaders of France and Germany have made another attempt to patch up the crumbling ceasefire in east Ukraine, as fighting continued a day after pro-Russia rebels gained control of a strategic rail junction they had described as the main obstacle to peace.

A four-way telephone call with the leaders of Ukraine and Russia was followed by a French statement saying there was agreement that the package of measures negotiated in Minsk last week should be implemented “strictly and in their entirety”.

Gunfire and shelling had tailed off in Debaltseve by Thursday morning, after thousands of Kiev’s forces made a bedraggled, dangerous retreat from its bombed-out streets. But Guardian reporters heard artillery fire during the day in other towns newly at risk because the retreat left them on or near the frontline.



There was also fighting with tanks and artillery near the coastal city of Mariupol, Ukrainian military spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh said, and reports of shelling in rebel-held Donetsk.

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Kiev’s humiliating defeat in Debaltseve was one of the worst it has endured in nearly a year of fighting, and there are fears the scale and speed of the victory could encourage separatists to push on with other attacks.

The fighters had promised to respect the ceasefire if they captured the railway town, which connects two of their strongholds.

Igor Plotnitsky, head of the self-declared Luhansk People’s Republic, has said his forces are already pulling back artillery – a key requirement of the deal – and an official in Donetsk also said weapons were being removed from a key road.

But although monitors from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe observed movement of heavy weapons, they had not seen a withdrawal from the frontline, the group said.

After days of heavy fighting, Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, called for international peacekeepers to monitor the deal, but Moscow has warned it considers the pact sealed last week in Minsk the only route to peace.

Western politicians who helped negotiate the deal are frustrated by repeated and flagrant violations of its terms, but are still trying to patch it up.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ukrainian soldiers by the roadside in Artemivsk. Photograph: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

For all the flaws of the ceasefire, it is probably more attractive to Kiev and European capitals than a full-blown resumption of a conflict that has already claimed over 5,000 lives in 10 months.

The fate of Debaltseve served as a warning of what is at stake. Poroshenko said he had ordered a “planned and organised retreat”, but grubby soldiers trickled back to their units with tales of what sounded more like a rout.

About 50 men from the 108th brigade had made it back with two of their three armoured vehicles, after faking an overnight camp by lighting fires and turning on generators.

As rebels camped around them watched the base, they sneaked past in darkness, walking for seven to eight hours through fields and forests, medic Dmytro Teruk said. A rocket attack had destroyed a truck carrying bodies of dead soldiers in front of them, but Teruk’s unit made it out unscathed.

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But the men were exhausted after spending the past month in frigid dugouts with holes blown in the roofs by near-constant shelling. They hadn’t even had cutlery, and “only the tea was hot”, he said. “Every five minutes, bullets flew by, every half hour there was an explosion,” he said.

As he spoke, the sound of outgoing artillery boomed from behind the Ukrainian lines, apparently still covering the long, chaotic retreat. At least 2,745 soldiers had made it out of Debaltseve, but 13 had been killed and 157 wounded in the retreat, Kiev said on Thursday. Another 90 had been taken captive and 82 were missing.

Soldiers at a checkpoint in Luhanske, where a huge Ukrainian flag was draped across the side of what was once a cafe, said although there had been isolated incoming mortar fire overnight, everything was quiet on Thursday.

But mortar rounds had struck the outskirts of Popasna, a government-controlled town sitting 10 miles from a group of rebels, the mayor, Yury Onischenko, said.

Holes blown in apartment blocks, burnt-out businesses and shattered windows in every other building attested to heavy shelling in recent months. After a polyclinic was damaged and two stores and a house were destroyed in the first hours of the ceasefire on Sunday, killing an elderly couple, the area had been quiet, Onischenko said.

“There’s not much hope for peace, but at least there’s some,” he added, in an interview interrupted by regular shelling.























