DPA/Brussels/Moscow

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has announced a fresh effort for ceasefire talks, as EU foreign ministers drafted new sanctions against separatists in the country and their supporters in Russia.
Poroshenko told a meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group that consultations should be held promptly for an immediate ceasefire and heavy weapons withdrawal.
The Belarusian foreign ministry said the group will meet in Minsk today and separatist leaders indicated that they will participate.
“If the talks happen, the main focus will be in implementing the ceasefire,” Vladislav Deinego of the self-declared “Luhansk People’s Republic” told Interfax.
The contact group, which comprises Russia, Ukraine and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), negotiated the last ceasefire with the separatists in September.
The renewed effort comes amid heavy fighting between government troops and separatist militias in eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Security Council said that five soldiers were killed and 29 wounded over the past 24 hours.
More than 30 people were killed at the weekend in an attack on the port city of Mariupol.
“More than 5,000 people have been killed since last April, over half a million people have been put out of their homes, more than 100,000 children have been displaced,” Irish Foreign Minister Charles Flanagan said in Brussels. “It’s absolutely essential that the EU responds in a firm way, with one voice.”
The ministers have been asked by their leaders to consider new sanctions, but they require unanimity in the European Union – and some countries have grown wary of further restrictive measures.
Greece raised eyebrows this week when its new far-left government objected to a statement by EU leaders that had first raised the spectre of further sanctions.
Greek Finance Minister Giannis Varoufakis later said the issue was not the sanctions, but the lack of proper consultation.
“Greece is working for the restoration of peace and stability in Ukraine and, at the same time, is working to prevent a rift between the European Union and Russia,” the country’s new foreign minister, Nikos Kotzias, said.
But Germany’s Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that the stance of the Greek government did not make yesterday’s debate “any easier”.
Several ministers expressed hope that the bloc would remain united, and predicted that they would manage to issue new travel bans and asset freezes.
“Today we will reinforce the individual sanctions against those who continue to use armed force, to endanger peace, to cause victims - including civilian victims,” said Harlem Desir, France’s minister of state for European affairs.
He said the sanctions will target “separatists and those who support them, including Russia, because the greatest firmness is needed to bring (people) back to a negotiated solution”.
Expectations were also high that the EU will extend a set of existing sanctions coming up for renewal in March, which targets people deemed responsible for destabilising Ukraine.
EU sanctions have so far had little effect in halting the fighting in Ukraine, but Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius insisted that they are the right way to go.
“Let’s be patient, let’s let them work and I hope, I believe that rational thinking will come finally,” he said. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who met with Kotzias yesterday, said that he hopes the EU will step up pressure on Russia.
“I understand that the ministers are ready to prepare bold and robust statements about supporting Ukraine, about further ideas how to increase pressure on Russia,” he said after talks with Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels.
Russia, meanwhile, cautioned Bosnia-Herzegovina against delivering ammunitions to Ukraine.
“These deliveries are planned by a country that itself experienced all the horrors of a fratricidal war from 1992 to 1995,” foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.
According to local media reports, two Bosnian companies have agreed to deliver rifle and pistol ammunition worth some $5.6mn to Ukraine.
Russia itself is widely accused of delivering arms, fighters and regular troops to the separatist militia fighting in eastern Ukraine.






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