Ukraine-Russia: peace talks on Wednesday seen as “last chance”

Minsk (in Belarus) will be the city where Petro Poroshenko, Vladimir Putin, Angela Merkel and François Hollande will try to come to a ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine.

On Sunday, intense shelling continued around Debaltseve. The town lies in a pocket between the two main separatist controlled regions.

On the border between Ukraine and Russia long queues of cars wait to cross. Most have Donetsk region registrations plates and their passengers say the upsurge in fighting is intolerable, informed Euronews. “They are shelling… they are shelling and that’s why people are leaving. It (a shell) exploded and we got scared, what else can we do? We want to live,” explained one refugee from the Donetsk region.

Latest official information from Ukrainian government on Monday morning spoke of 9 soldiers killed in the just 24 hours.

MINSK: TALKS FOR “UNCONDITIONAL CEASEFIRE”

The four-way meeting in Minsk on Wednesday, 11^th, is seen as a last chance to stop hostilities and start negotiation. The meeting will put around one table President Poroshenko from Ukraine, President Putin from Russia, President François Hollande from France and the German Prime Minister Angela Merkel.

The meeting was agreed during a phone conversation on Sunday, the 8^th, Poroshenko said he was hopeful the meeting in the Belarus capital would lead to “a swift and unconditional ceasefire.”

A 12-point truce, signed between Kyiv and pro-Russian separatists in September 2014 proved ineffective and violence has continued to escalate. More than 5,000 civilians and soldiers have lost their life in the Eastern Ukraine war zone since the conflict started.

Las week, Germany and France showed their disagreement with voices of NATO and US parliamentaries which asked to deliver weapons to Ukraine’s Government to help defeat pro-Russian rebels.