Ukraine factions ease fight
The army said rebel forces still pose a danger, but guns on both sides fell silent again.
Guns fell silent in eastern Ukraine for the second time during the week as government forces and pro-Russian separatists said they were pulling back weapons from the conflict area in line with a Feb. 12 cease-fire.
Militia in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic began a new stage of withdrawing heavy arms Saturday morning, according to the separatist-run DAN news service. Ukraine's defense minister said rebels had stopped firing on government positions. On Friday, the government in Kiev said rebel artillery, mortar, and tank fire had killed three of its soldiers and wounded seven in violation of a truce agreement sealed in Minsk, Belarus.
"From midnight to this morning, when I arrived at the Ground Forces Academy in Lviv, there were no cases of shelling of our positions," news service Interfax cited Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak as saying from the western Ukrainian city.
A pause in fighting may give Ukraine breathing space to deal with a spiraling currency crisis and the threat of Russia cutting off natural gas supplies. The European Union and the U.S. have threatened to intensify sanctions against Russia if President Vladimir Putin doesn't use his sway to help stop the conflict, which has killed more than 5,600 people and brought ties between the Cold War foes to their lowest level since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The lack of progress in recent weeks on bringing peace to the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk has further hurt Ukraine's currency. The nation is still awaiting a disbursement from a $17.5 billion International Monetary Fund rescue and investors are nearing talks to ease terms on the government's foreign debt.
The hryvnia has plunged more than 40 percent this year amid a deepening recession and international reserves at the lowest in at least a decade. Ukraine's central bank tightened capital controls this week and announced more curbs may be on the way to stop the currency's meltdown.
"Panic must be stopped and we are doing that now," National Bank of Ukraine governor Valeriya Gontareva said on Friday in Kiev.
The pull-back of heavy weapons is a key part of the cease- fire and is meant to be followed by intensified monitoring by officials from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. OSCE officials said this week that separatists are still restricting access for their observers.
The Ukrainian army said Friday that rebel forces still posed an immediate danger in several parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and President Petro Poroshenko said his forces are ready to return weapons to the front if the cease- fire crumbles. Fighting had persisted east of the port city of Mariupol, seen by Ukrainian officials as a potential objective if rebels were to try to create a land bridge to Crimea, which Putin annexed in last March.
"The threat of an offensive remains," Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for the Ukrainian military, told reporters.