Ukraine cease-fire ignored around key railway hub

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY

Continued fighting over a key railway hub in eastern Ukraine threatened Monday to unravel a barely day-old cease-fire between government troops and pro-Russian separatists.

Rebels shelled Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve with heavy artillery and multiple launch rocket systems, according to Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council.

Separatists launched 112 attacks in 24 hours, 88 of them on Debaltseve, according to Ukraine's UNIAN news agency, citing the Ukrainian military.

Up to 5,000 government troops are in the city, which has rail lines that connect the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk with Russia.

Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the separatists' self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said the cease-fire that began Sunday does not apply to Debaltseve because it is within the region already held by the rebels and was not mentioned in the agreement approved last week in Minsk, Belarus.

He also has given mixed messages about whether Ukrainian forces in that city can leave unharmed. Zakharchenko said Saturday, before the cease-fire began, that if Ukrainian troops tried to leave Debaltseve, they would be stopped. On Monday he said Ukrainian troops should leave the city "without weapons and military equipment," according to the Russian news site Sputnik News.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki expressed "grave concern" over the fighting around Debaltseve.

"These aggressive actions and statements by the Russia-backed separatists threaten the most recent cease-fire and jeopardize the planned withdrawal of heavy weapons," as called for in the agreement reached last Thursday, Psaki said.

President Obama is weighing whether to give Ukraine more weapons to repel the separatists but has delayed a decision to see if the fighting ebbs.

"If the cease-fire does not take hold and you see a resumption of fighting, the question of military assistance to Ukraine will be right back on the top of the list," said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Pifer said Ukraine's forces are reluctant to retreat because of the strategic value of Debaltseve and because of past experience with the insurgents. In August, when the separatists surrounded Ukrainian forces near Ilovaysk, they agreed to provide safe passage but then pounded government troops with artillery and rocket fire when they tried to escape, killing many.

Ilkka Kanerva, parliamentary president of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said Monday that the ongoing fighting will be a barometer of whether last week's agreement will hold.

"I welcome the news that it has largely held so far, while I deplore the illegal separatists' false and counterproductive insistence that the deal does not apply to Debaltseve, a government-held town," Kanerva said.

The cease-fire agreement was the result of last-ditch diplomacy launched by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande, who flew to Kiev and then Moscow to mediate between presidents Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine and Vladimir Putin of Russia.

The agreement was signed by representatives of the OSCE, Russia, Ukraine and leaders of the separatist-held regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky, the leader of the Luhansk separatist region, nearly derailed the meeting in Minsk by demanding that Debaltseve be placed under separatist control, Ukraine's representative at the talks, Leonid Kuchma, told the Kyiv Post.

The fighting over Debaltseve could play a similar role as the fight over the Donetsk airport, where fighting escalated in January and unraveled a cease-fire agreement across the region that was put in place last September.