Poroshenko, US press Putin on Ukraine violence

KIEV: Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko made a personal plea to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Washington threatened tougher measures on Wednesday should Moscow fail to rein in separatists mounting a new offensive in the east of the ex-Soviet republic.
Poroshenko’s personal letter and US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s warning came one day after European Union leaders unanimously backed pursuing more economic restrictions against Russia for its alleged meddling in Ukraine.
Greece and Cyprus later distanced themselves from the statement but are not expected to fight new penalties the bloc’s 28 foreign ministers will draft in Brussels on Thursday.
Western sanctions and a coinciding slide in the price of its vital oil exports have sent Russia into recession and seen Standard and Poor’s slap a “junk” rating on Moscow’s foreign currency debt.
The downgrade threatens to further alienate Western investors as the grade is the worst in Russia since the start of Putin’s 15-year rule.
Yet the pain appears to have done little to alter Putin’s tough approach to his western neighbour or to dent Russians’ monumental trust in the Kremlin chief.
The pro-Moscow rebels last week defiantly pulled out of peace talks and vowed to take a strategic government-held coastal city that provides a direct land bridge to Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Crimea peninsula.
The fighters later denied killing 31 civilians in a weekend rocket assault on the port of Mariupol that international monitors said was launched from rebel-held territory.
A new eastern offensive has also seen separatists in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions try to link up their armies by taking over isolated pockets of land still controlled by government troops.
The Kiev military and local pro-government officials said several soldiers and many civilians died in the latest clashes overnight. The United Nations believes the latest spiral of violence has pushed the war’s death toll above 5,100.
Poroshenko’s office said the letter to Putin demanded that Moscow immediately rein in the offensive and fulfill the terms of a long-ignored September peace plan it signed with Kiev and two top separatist leaders in Belarus.
“On Monday, I sent a letter to President Putin whose main elements included not only the demand to cease fire and implement the Minsk Agreements but also to release Nadezhda (Nadia) Savchenko and all the hostages,” the presidency quoted Poroshenko as saying.