AFP
Geneva
The US and Russian foreign ministers expressed cautious optimism after holding talks in Geneva yesterday to end fighting in Ukraine, where the UN says more than 6,000 people have died in less than a year.
The meeting between John Kerry and Sergei Lavrov in Geneva was just one of several attempts at mediation on the conflict yesterday, while high-stakes negotiations to resolve a bitter gas dispute between Kiev and Moscow took place in Brussels.
Speaking separately after their 80-minute meeting, Kerry and Lavrov both cautiously said that a February 15 ceasefire was on the right track, despite repeated breaches of the peace deal that have left hundreds dead.
The Russian foreign minister welcomed “tangible progress” in the implementation of the agreement reached in Minsk last month, saying that “the ceasefire is being consolidated, heavy weapons are withdrawn”.
Kerry, meanwhile, said he was “very hopeful” that his talks with Lavrov would help bring about the change needed to end fighting.
“Our hope is that within the next hours, and certainly not more than days, this (ceasefire) will be fully implemented,” he said.
Underlining this momentum, the Russian, Ukrainian, French and German leaders agreed to hold four-way telephone talks on the crisis in the evening, the Interfax news agency quoted a Kremlin adviser as saying.
But Kerry cautioned that there so far had been “a kind of cherry-picking, a piecemeal selectivity to the application of the Minsk agreements”.
While fighting has broadly halted along much of Ukraine’s frontline, several incidents took place over the weekend, with press photographer Sergiy Nikolayev killed by a mortar shell and eight soldiers injured by rebel fire.
Ukraine’s army said yesterday that one soldier had been killed, but the ceasefire was still broadly holding.
Both sides have also begun to pull back some heavy weaponry from the frontline, but monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have said it is too early to confirm a full pullback.
“I underscored this morning that if there continues to be this broad swathe of non-compliance ... then there would be inevitable consequences that would place further strain on Russia’s economy,” Kerry said, referring to further sanctions that the US and EU are working on.
The United Nations, meanwhile, cast a cloud on hopes raised by the talks with its ninth report on the situation painting a bleak picture of developments in the country and warning that there has been a “serious escalation” of the conflict since the beginning of the year.
“More than 6,000 lives have now been lost in less than a year due to the fighting in eastern Ukraine,” UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement.
The report detailed how the conflict was affecting civilians, pointing to arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances committed mainly by armed groups but also in some cases by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.
The swelling violence and dire living conditions have forced increasing numbers of people to flee, and by mid-February, at least one million people had been registered as internally displaced inside Ukraine.
“Many have been trapped in conflict zones, forced to shelter in basements, with hardly any drinking water, food, heating, electricity or basic medical supplies,” al-Hussein said.
He called on all sides to respect a fragile February 15 peace deal and “halt the indiscriminate shelling and other hostilities that have created a dreadful situation for civilians”.
Speaking in Geneva at the launch of the report, UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic said that “the deliberate targeting of civilian areas may constitute a war crime, and if widespread and systematic, a crime against humanity”.
The report detailed how the conflict is affecting civilians, including arbitrary detention, torture and enforced disappearances committed mainly by armed groups but also in some cases by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.
It pointed to suspicions of summary, extrajudicial and arbitrary executions, including Ukrainian soldiers found “with their hands tied with white electrical cable” at Donetsk airport after it was taken by armed groups in January.
Released just days after Ukrainian photographer Nikolayev was killed, the report also voiced deep concern over attacks and pressures on journalists in the country.
Altogether, it found that 5,665 people were killed and 13,961 wounded from the beginning of the conflict in April through the middle of last month.
But al-Hussein’s office said the escalation in fighting in recent weeks, especially near Donetsk airport and around Debaltseve, had left hundreds of civilians and fighters dead, sending the toll soaring past the 6,000-mark.
The escalating violence has created “an untenable situation for those trapped or held hostage in the areas controlled by armed groups”, the statement said.
“All aspects of people’s lives are being negatively affected,” al-Hussein said. “Many have been trapped in conflict zones, forced to shelter in basements, with hardly any drinking water, food, heating, electricity or basic medical supplies.”
“The armed groups have on several occasions stated that they will not allow the evacuations of people from social care institutions, such as the elderly or bed-ridden,” Simonovic added. “Nothing has been done to evacuate prison inmates either.”
Kerry said he hoped that the Geneva talks would lead to further de-escalation.
In Brussels, three-way gas talks kicked off between the energy ministers of Ukraine and Russia, together with European Commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic.
Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom threatened last week to cut deliveries to Ukraine over a dispute related to Moscow’s move to supply gas directly to separatist areas and then demand that Kiev pay for it.
Rebel leaders in east Ukraine said that Kiev had suddenly ceased gas supplies, and asked for access to gas from Russia.
Ukraine’s national gas company Naftogas did stop pumping gas to the separatist areas last month, saying that it could not deliver due to a damaged pipeline, but added that deliveries resumed a few hours later.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused Ukraine of perpetrating a kind of “genocide” by denying energy to 4mn people living in territories hit by a humanitarian crisis.
The Kremlin appeared to soften its rhetoric, however, after the European Union unveiled plans last week for a continent-wide single energy market, with the goal of decreasing its reliance on Russian gas.
Kerry gestures during a news conference in Geneva after the meeting with Lavrov yesterday.
