Militias play football under fire MAT 19.02.2015,DNR War in Ukraine
UKRAINE WAR LAST NEWS TODAY(the best new and hot vidio) Subscribe to the channel!!!THANK YOU War in Donbass - fighting on the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine with the...
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Militias play football under fire MAT 19.02.2015,DNR War in Ukraine - Video
Ukraine News!Today War 19 02 2015 Rebels fighting in Lugansk
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Ukraine News!Today War 19 02 2015 Rebels fighting in Lugansk - Video
Ukraine crisis Heavy shelling continues around Donetsk
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Ukraine crisis Heavy shelling continues around Donetsk - Video
Story highlights NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg urges Russia to "withdraw all its forces from eastern Ukraine" Ukraine's military says 80% of its armed forces have now withdrawn from Debaltseve Ukraine leader says forces are pulling back, urges world to use tough response to Russia
The two sides have been battling for weeks for control of Debaltseve, and continued conflict there has undermined a truce that apparently went into effect Sunday, raising concerns it is all but dead.
The ramifications for the West are huge because the 10-month-long conflict in eastern Ukraine has hiked tensions with Russia to a level not seen since the end of the Cold War, affecting trade and raising the specter of Russian expansion into Eastern Europe.
CNN's Nick Paton Walsh called the loss of Debaltseve a huge blow to the Ukrainian government and a win for the separatist militants, who regarded it already as their territory when the front lines for the ceasefire were drawn. It's not yet clear how Kiev will respond.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, in a taped statement, said Ukrainian armed forces in the area had left Debaltseve according to plan and that Kiev was waiting for two remaining columns to pull back to the new defensive line.
"Debaltseve was under our control, there was no encirclement, and our troops left the area in a planned and organized manner with all the heavy weaponry," he said, according to his office.
Poroshenko said in his conversations with U.S. and European Union leaders he had called for "a firm reaction from the world to Russia's brutal violation of the Minsk agreements," referring to the ceasefire agreed upon in Belarus.
The President, wearing a camouflage jacket, said he was on his way to the front line to meet with some of the soldiers who have pulled back. "I will be honored to shake their hands," he said.
Ukrainian defense spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a Kiev news conference that the "organized retreat" from Debaltseve should be complete "within hours."
The official news agency of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, DAN, earlier quoted separatists as saying there had been a large handover of weapons to the separatist forces in Debaltseve.
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Ukraine troops lose key town
Ukrainian soldiers repair their truck's bullet-shattered windshield Thursday, hit during their withdrawal from Debaltseve Wednesday. Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images hide caption
Ukrainian soldiers repair their truck's bullet-shattered windshield Thursday, hit during their withdrawal from Debaltseve Wednesday.
Trying to salvage a cease-fire that has not stopped the fighting in eastern Ukraine, the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia held a conference call Thursday in which they called for full implementation of the truce's terms.
Ukraine says that in the past 24 hours alone, 14 of its soldiers have died and 172 were injured.
With Debaltseve having fallen, intense shelling is now reportedly focused on an area east of the key port city of Mariupol. That's where the town of Shyrokyne "has become the epicenter of the hostilities," Ukrainian army spokesman Anatoliy Stelmakh says.
Wednesday night, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called for U.N. peacekeepers to monitor a cease-fire but as Reuters reports, Russian-backed separatists said that such a move would violate the cease-fire's terms. And in Moscow, a government spokesman "told a news conference Kiev was responsible for making sure the Minsk agreements were carried out," The New York Times reports.
Intense fighting has raged in parts of Ukraine since the cease-fire began Sunday, particularly in the key strategic city of Debaltseve, where Ukrainian troops have been withdrawing after a weeks-long siege.
International monitors haven't been able to observe conditions in the city, a vital railroad hub between separatist-held territories.
"The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the OSCE, says that Russian and separatist forces have been preventing them from visiting Debaltseve for days," NPR's Corey Flintoff reports.
Corey adds, "The Ukrainian president says the four leaders agreed again today that those monitors would get full access. So we'll see if that happens."
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Ukraine Update: Fighting Shifts To Mariupol; A Call For UN Peacekeepers