UN and US to discuss surge in Ukraine violence

The United Nations Security Council will convene and senior US officials will meet today to discuss resurgent fighting in eastern Ukraine, amid claims from Kiev and Nato that Russia is boosting its military presence in the region.

"There is a colossal threat of renewed large-scale military operations on the part of the Russian-terrorist groups," Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko told parliament in Kiev yesterday.

"The military must be as ready for a renewed offensive by the enemy in Donbas, as for a full-scale invasion along the whole length of the border with Russia," he added, claiming that Moscow had sent 9,000 servicemen into Ukraine and massed troops and weapons near the border. Donbas is the collective name for the industrial Donetsk and Luhansk provinces that are partly controlled by Moscow-backed rebels, and where fighting has killed more than 6,400 people and injured more than 15,000 since April 2014.

Artillery fire

Scores of people have been killed in artillery fire and skirmishes since the announcement of a ceasefire in February, but on Wednesday hostilities intensified sharply around the government-held town of Marinka.

Ukrainian officials said five servicemen were killed and 39 wounded in the clashes near Marinka, which is about 20km west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk; the militants said 16 of their fighters had died, along with five civilians.

Kiev accused the separatists of mounting an offensive, and international monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe noted a considerable number of artillery pieces heading through rebel-held territory towards Marinka.

Russian officials, by contrast, accused Kiev of causing "provocations" to destroy the ceasefire, and the militants' defence minister Eduard Basurin claimed his troops were merely moving forward to occupy abandoned Ukrainian positions.

The UN Security Council has called a meeting for today to discuss Ukraine, and US defence secretary Ashton Carter is gathering two dozen senior US military officers and diplomats for consultations in Stuttgart, Germany.

“This meeting is intended to inform the secretary’s thinking as he heads into his first Nato ministerial in late June,” said Pentagon spokesman Brent Colburn.

Areas of focus

“One of the areas of focus will be Russia’s actions over the past 18 months, including their operations in Ukraine.”

The US military has conducted exercises with Ukraine and Nato allies in eastern Europe in recent months, and is helping to train Kiev’s troops.

US president Barack Obama is under growing domestic pressure to send defensive weapons to Ukraine, and several Nato member states in Europe have not ruled out the possibility of delivering arms to Kiev.

As German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said yesterday that "serious violations" of Ukraine's truce were causing "great concern", Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said Russia had a "particular responsibility" to end the conflict.

“We have precise information that Russia is present in eastern Ukraine and that it has delivered large quantities of heavy, advanced weapons to the separatists . . . Artillery, anti-aircraft systems, advanced weapons systems. They have supplied more than 1,000 units of this kind,” Mr Stoltenberg said.