Reuters/Minsk/Kiev

A new round of peace talks got under way yesterday involving Ukraine and separatists, even as fighting between Kiev government forces and the Russian-backed rebels raged in Ukraine’s east, claiming civilian and military lives.
The main members of the so-called contact group – Ukrainian former president Leonid Kuchma, a Russian diplomat and an Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe official – met at a state residence in the Belarussian capital Minsk, where they were joined by two separatist officials.
The sides have held only one inconclusive meeting since agreeing a ceasefire last September as part of a 12-point blueprint for peace. Much-violated from the start, that truce collapsed completely with a new rebel advance last week.
Both sides have accused each other of deadly artillery and mortar strikes on civilian targets in the past two weeks, including on a cultural centre in the main regional city of Donetsk on Friday which killed at least five people waiting for humanitarian hand-outs.
The September Minsk peace plan also called for tighter control of the joint Russia-Ukraine border, through which Kiev says Moscow is funnelling fighters and equipment, and the freeing of prisoners held by the sides.
Much has changed on the ground, however, since September.
The separatists have set up self-proclaimed “people’s republics” while their forces, which Kiev says are supported by 9,000 Russian regular troops, have seized more than 500sq km of territory beyond that agreed in the Minsk talks and threaten to seize control of the east’s two main regions entirely.
Heavy shelling continued yesterday in Ukraine’s eastern regions as the separatists sought to tighten a circle around government forces clinging on to control of the strategic rail and road junction of Debaltseve.
Regional police chief Vyacheslav Abroskin, in a Facebook post, said that 12 civilians had been killed yesterday by separatist artillery shelling of the town, which lies to the northeast of Donetsk.
Defence Minister Stepan Poltorak said 15 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 30 wounded in clashes across the east.
“The toughest situation is in the Vuhlehirsk area where the terrorists are trying to seize the town and occupy positions to move forward and encircle Debaltseve,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a separate briefing.
Debaltseve is on the main highway linking Donetsk and the other big rebel-controlled city of Luhansk and is also a vital rail link for goods traffic from Russia which Kiev accuses of arming the rebels.
The rebels were also continuing to threaten Mariupol, a town of half a million in the southeast of the country on the coast of Sea of Azov, Lysenko said.
More than 5,000 people have been killed in the Ukraine conflict which erupted last April following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in response to the ousting of a Moscow-backed president in Kiev by street protests.
Russia denies what the West and Kiev says is incontrovertible proof that its troops are fighting on behalf of the separatists and providing them with military equipment.
United States and Western sanctions against Russia have led to the biggest crisis in Russia-West relations since the end of the Cold War more than 20 years ago.