Ukraine crisis: Leaders to put plan to Poroshenko

THE leaders of Russia, France and Germany have agreed in Moscow to work on a peace plan for the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, France’s Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel described talks on Friday as “constructive”.

They will discuss the plan by telephone with Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko on Sunday.

Russia is accused of arming pro-Russian separatists – claims it denies.

Fighting has left nearly 5,400 people dead since April, the UN says.

Some 1.2 million Ukrainians have fled their homes since last April, when the rebels seized a big swathe of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

“The situation is getting very dire indeed,” Michael Bociurkiw, a spokesman for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) special monitoring mission in Ukraine, told the BBC.

“Over the past few days over 3,000 people have been evacuated,” he said, adding that overcrowding in some evacuation centres meant that evacuees were being temporarily accommodated in train carriages in cold conditions.

Few details of the peace plan have emerged, but it is thought to be an attempt to revive a September ceasefire, signed in Minsk in Belarus. Since then the rebels have seized more ground, raising alarm in Kiev and among Ukraine’s backers.

Diplomatic efforts will continue on Saturday at an international security conference in the German city of Munich, where Mrs Merkel, US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are all due to speak.

It will not be what they say in public that matters but the private conversations in a raft of hastily arranged bilateral meetings behind closed doors, BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus reports.

There was no joint press conference or statement from the Russian, German and French leaders after such a high-profile Kremlin meeting. Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande left for the airport straight away. But if there was no breakthrough, there was also no breakdown.

Comments from officials from all three countries had clearly been co-ordinated. In Moscow, Paris and Berlin they all described the talks as substantive and constructive. They all noted that the three leaders, plus the president of Ukraine, would confer again by phone on Sunday.

And they all said work would continue on a possible blueprint for a deal, based on the French and German initiative, with added proposals from President Poroshenko and President Putin.

The fact that few details have been made public is probably positive. It suggests this is an attempt to negotiate seriously, without rhetoric and out of the public eye. But it also means we do not really know what is on the table, how far apart the various parties are and how fragile this latest mission to bring peace to Ukraine might be.

The peace proposal Mr Hollande and Mrs Merkel took to Moscow on Friday was crafted with the Ukrainian government on Thursday.

Mr Hollande said the aim was not just a ceasefire but a “comprehensive agreement”, although Mrs Merkel said it was “totally open” whether that could be achieved.

Senior Russian politician Alexei Pushkov praised the talks, and Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko said he thought the peace plan proposed by Mrs Merkel and Mr Hollande could work, Reuters news agency reported.

Questions any plan would have to address include the route of any new ceasefire line – given the rebel advances of recent weeks – how to enforce it, and the future status of the conflict zone, says the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford in Moscow.

Moscow is still denying any direct role in the conflict, while Kiev insists above all that Ukraine must remain united, our correspondent says.

The Secretary General of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, has told the BBC that Moscow’s support for the rebels in Ukraine is growing.

“We see a combination of Russian equipment provided by the Russians but also Russian troops,” he said.

“Especially we have seen an increase in the supply of heavy equipment – artillery, tanks, advanced air defence systems. And some of these equipments [sic] are very advanced, they can only come from Russia and they can only be operated by people who have a lot of training, a lot of skills. And that just underscores that there are Russian troops in eastern Ukraine.”

Washington is considering Ukrainian pleas for better weaponry to fend off the rebels, raising European fears of an escalation in the conflict and spurring the latest peace bid.