Ukraine rebels agree to truce

President faces new pressure to negotiate with separatist leaders

Ukraine's new Western-backed president faced pressure on Tuesday to negotiate with top rebel commanders after a surprise turnabout in which insurgents agreed to a truce and talks on ending their uprising.

In an unexpected announcement that came after talks with Russia's ambassador to Kiev and an OSCE envoy, the head of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic said on Monday he was dropping his demand for an immediate Ukrainian troop withdrawal.

Militia members and volunteer medics sign a written oath of allegiance, after verbally taking the oath, to the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, on Lenin square in Donetsk on Sunday. Dmitry Lovetsky / Associated Press

"We hope that during the period in which both sides halt fire, we will be able to agree and begin consultations about holding negotiations about a peaceful settlement to the conflict," Oleksandr Borodai said, adding that his forces would hold their fire until Friday morning.

The move put pressure on Poroshenko because the 48-year-old chocolate tycoon had previously ruled out negotiating with rebels directly implicated in the violence in mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, where 400 people have been killed in 11weeks.

Poroshenko ordered a one-week unilateral cease-fire last Friday that was accompanied by a blueprint for ending the uprising that threatens the unity of the former Soviet republic.

But he also said that he would never talk directly to rebels with "blood on their hands" or those implicated in "murder and torture".

Poroshenko did not spell out whom he was excluding from the negotiations. But his comments were interpreted in Moscow as implying that he was referring specifically to rebel commanders such as Borodai. The border regions of Donetsk and Lughansk-home to 7 million people as well as Ukraine's crucial coal and metals industries - were overrun in early April by gunmen who proclaimed their independence from Kiev the following month.

The rebel commanders in Lughansk have not yet publicly joined Borodai's peace overture and the Ukranian military reported more violence overnight.

Sanctions threat

The spokesman of Ukraine's "anti-terrorist operation" said gunmen continued attacking soldiers in the Donetsk rebel stronghold city of Sloviansk and a nearby town. "Ukrainian servicemen suffered no losses," spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov wrote in a Facebook post.

Poroshenko has been pressing world leaders to follow through with their threat to unleash devastating economic sanctions against Russia should President Vladimir Putin fail to immediately end his perceived military and diplomatic backing of the insurgents.

The European Union warned after a meeting of foreign ministers on Monday that it expected to see action from Putin "within days".

The White House said US President Barack Obama also told Putin by phone on Monday that Russia would face new sanctions if it failed to stop the flow of weapons into Ukraine. "Russia will face additional costs if we do not see concrete actions to deescalate the situation," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters.

Poroshenko will sign a historic EU trade pact on Friday that crowns his May 25 election promise to make a decisive move westward - one strongly resisted by Russia and that lies at the heart of the current crisis.

Moscow is still smarting from the ousting of Ukraine's former president Viktor Yanukovych in February. Yanukovych was a key ally of Russia and could have brought Ukraine into a new alliance of post-Soviet nations being assembled by the Kremlin.

The subsequent flow of heavy weapons and gunmen across the porous border into eastern Ukraine seemed to indicate that the Kremlin is - at the very least - turning a blind eye to local officials and military commanders' efforts to support the insurgents.

(China Daily 06/25/2014 page11)