Conflict in Ukraine can only be stopped by joint international efforts, a Polish MP has said during a visit to Avdiivka, which has been under attack by Russian separatists in recent weeks.

Małgorzata Gosiewska, a member of parliament from Poland’s ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, headed a Polish delegation to war-torn Avdiivka in the eastern Donbass region of Ukraine, according to the defence ministry in Kiev.

“We must remember that the war in eastern Ukraine is taking place quite near [to Poland],” Gosiewska said, according to the wschodnik.pl website.

She said she was “impressed by the way Ukraine had united to support Avdiivka’s citizens”, adding that only joint multinational efforts could put an end to the fighting in Ukraine’s east.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported that a ceasefire has been in place since 5pm on Sunday after leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine agreed to implement the terms of a 2014 peace agreement which had been violated in the past.

Under the new ceasefire deal, both sides were to simultaneously withdraw their heavy weapons on Monday.

Gosiewska is a co-author of report entitled "Russian Crimes in the East of Ukraine”, which was last year submitted to the International Criminal Court in the Hague.

She is the first wife of the late Przemysław Gosiewski, also a PiS MP, who died along with 95 others, including then-President Lech Kaczyński, when a Polish presidential plane crashed while trying to land in fog in Smolensk, western Russia in 2010.

Some 10,000 people have died in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which started in April 2014. (vb/pk)