(Reuters) – Pro-Russian separatists said yesterday they were ready for a ceasefire with the Kiev government after increasing gains by Ukrainian forces against rebel forces.
“We are ready for a ceasefire to prevent the proliferation of a humanitarian disaster in Donbass,” Alexander Zakharchenko, prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people’s republic, said in a statement, referring to the area of eastern Ukraine where combat is being waged.
He warned that Donetsk, the main industrial hub which is the centre of the rebel resistance, faced a lack of food, water, and electricity, but said the rebels were ready to defend the city of around one million people.
“In the event of a storm of the city the number of victims will increase by magnitude. We have no humanitarian corridors.
There is no supply of medicines … food supplies are nearing their end,” he said.
Ukrainian officials have said they are ready to agree a ceasefire but on condition the rebels surrender their arms. The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko was unavailable for immediate comment on Zakharchenko’s statement.
Earlier, Kiev said it had headed off an attempt by Russia to send troops into Ukraine under the guise of peacekeepers with the aim of provoking a large-scale military conflict, a statement Moscow dismissed as a “fairy tale”.
The White House said that during a call yesterday, US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel “agreed that any Russian intervention in Ukraine, even under purported ‘humanitarian’ auspices, without the formal, express consent and authorization of the government of Ukraine is unacceptable, violates international law, and will provoke additional consequences.”
Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron also discussed the crisis and said tougher sanctions should be imposed on Russia if it sends troops into Ukraine, according to a statement from Cameron’s office.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in a phone call with US Secretary of State John Kerry, called for “urgent measures for preventing an impending humanitarian catastrophe in south eastern regions” of Ukraine, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
Kerry “conveyed that Russia should not intervene in Ukraine under the guise of humanitarian convoys or any other pretext of ‘peacekeeping,’” a senior US State Department official said.