Berlin- Frank-Walter Steinmeier, German Foreign Minister, said on Tuesday in Berlin, that it would on Wednesday host another foreign ministers’ meeting to diffuse the Ukraine crisis, as fighting continued in the country’s east.
He said he would conduct talks with his colleagues from Ukraine, Russia and France Wednesday in Berlin.
“The goal is to prevent a worsening of the military confrontation and another political escalation between Kiev and Moscow,” he said.
The four ministers failed last week to agree to the terms of a summit that the leaders of the four nations would have then conducted in Kazakhstan.
Meanwhile, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Spokesman, said that such a summit was unlikely because the government in Kiev was fuelling the armed conflict in the country’s east.
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“At this moment a summit doesn’t look as likely as it did before Ukraine renewed armed hostilities,” he said.
The Ukraine blamed the separatists and what it calls Russian backers for starting the violence by attempting to take the government-held airport of Donetsk.
Russia has vehemently denied accusations on the part of Ukraine and the West that it has been sending troops into Ukraine.
The Defence Ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday that the latest such claims from Kiev amount to “hallucinations.”
The National Security Council in Kiev had said Monday that two Russian battalions had crossed into Ukraine.
Donetsk separatist commanders said that they took the adjacent town of Pisky from the Ukrainians, but there was no immediate comment from Kiev.
Shelling was also reported from the outskirts of the southern port city of Mariupol and from Debaltseve, a government-controlled rail hub north of Donetsk.
The Kiev-loyal regional government of Donetsk said that six people were killed and 55 injured in fighting during the past 24 hours.
Security Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said that 19 soldiers were injured in the same period.
He said Ukraine has also began implementing a mobilisation drive, of recruiting 100,000 men to the armed forces this year, as decreed by President Petro Poroshenko and supported by parliament.(dpa/NAN)
