2016-09-01 18:56:00

Ukraine says ceasefire holding in troubled East


(Vatican Radio) Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says a new cease-fire between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine is holding, after months of clashes which included the deadliest fighting in a year. 

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Poroshenko said in a statement Thursday that his forces had not seen any fighting with Russian-backed separatists in the prevous 12 hours. 

The parties in the conflict, which has claimed more than 9,500 lives, earlier agreed to stop fighting by September 1, which is the first day of school in Ukraine.

Media of pro-Russian rebels confirmed the reports. 

Yet the road towards a new ceasefire hasn't been easy. Poroshenko said in separate remarks that more than a dozen Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and nearly a hundred wounded in what he called Russian shelling in recent weeks. 

ANGRY AT PUTIN

He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of seeking to destabilize Ukraine, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. 

"The purpose of [President] Putin is attempt to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. They don't need neither Donetsk [or] Luhansk [regions]," he said. 

"They need the whole Ukraine [that] should be part of the of the Russian empire. And they want to destabilize the global security situation in the world."  
      
Moscow has denied wrongdoing.  

Government forces and Russia-backed separatists agreed back in 2015 to stop fighting and pull back heavy weaponry. Yet the cease-fire failed, however, and international monitors had said the fighting had intensified in the past month to nearly a full-blown war.

The conflict began in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.








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