Ukraine: Ceasefire Looks Fragile As Clashes Intensify on Sunday

Despite the open announcement of ceasefire between Ukraine official forces and rebels, sporadic clashes were reported in eastern Ukraine on Sunday. The ceasefire negotiated in Belarus had come into force on Friday afternoon.

Washington Post reported that incidents of shellings and houses set ablaze came from Spartak village, north of Donetsk and closer to the airport. Also shelling in the port city of Mariupol killed a woman and injured three people.

Both the rebels and government forces are blaming each other for violating the ceasefire. However, the Ukrainian government made it clear that it would stand by the cease-fire despite stray violations. This was stated by Volodymyr Poleviy of the National Security Defence Council of Ukraine. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin and discussed the progress in the truce.

Arms By NATO Members

Perhaps, adding to the tensions were a statement by Yuri Lutsenko, a senior aide to the Ukraine's President, claiming that important agreements for arms supply to Ukraine have been clinched at the recent NATO meeting. Accordingly, five countries--United States, France, Italy, Poland and Norway will supply arms to Ukraine. This was posted on the Facebook page of Lutsenko. Russia stoutly opposes any NATO membership for Ukraine.

The U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel described Putin's recent actions in Ukraine as dangerous. The Amnesty International also expressed its concern and called the situation in Ukraine as "fraught with danger". It urged all parties to "stop violations of the laws of war." Amnesty blamed the rebels as well as Ukrainian military for comitting war crimes and released satellite images that shoed build-up of Russian armour and artillery in eastern Ukraine.

It is learnt that the Pro Russia rebels in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine are aiming for the complete control of port city Mariupol. They also tweeted that its forces were taking Mariupol, but later blamed the official forces for breaching the ceasefire. They alleged that their fighters from the Azov battalion came under Grad rocket fire from Ukrainian military. Saturday was quite incident-free and the truce appeared to be holding. With fewer violations, hopes had soared that the peace deal in Minsk would end the spiral of violence that already took more than 2,000 lives, since the internal war started in April this year.