Wall Street Journal – by LUKAS I. ALPERT and WILLIAM MAULDIN
Ukraine’s new president declared a one-week cease-fire Friday in the fight to put down a pro-Russia rebellion, starting a process the West hopes will pressure Moscow to rein in separatists it has been accused of supplying with weaponry.
The Kremlin responded coolly, however, calling the cease-fire an ultimatum rather than an invitation to talk. “The plan is missing the key element—a proposal to start negotiations,” it said in a statement.
In the U.S., officials added several Ukrainian separatist figures and leaders in Crimea, which Russia annexed in March, to its sanctions list. A senior U.S. official said Russia would face economic “scalpel sanctions” from the U.S. and the European Union if it continues to destabilize Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko announced the cease-fire on a visit to Sviatohirsk, a town in the Donetsk region near the separatist stronghold of Slovyansk, the Interior Ministry in Kiev said.
He has portrayed the unilateral cease-fire as a first step in a peace plan that aims to end the two-month-old uprising. It calls for the insurgents to lay down their weapons and offers an amnesty to those not guilty of grave crimes. Ultimately, the government would move to a more decentralized system, granting more autonomy to the regions.
Diplomats in the West say they now intend to step up pressure on Russian PresidentVladimir Putin to stop the separatists from fighting and secure the border or face more sanctions.
However, a separatist leader in Luhansk, the other border regions largely under rebel control, said his men would not lay down their arms unless government troops withdrew completely from the region.
The senior U.S. official said the U.S. is reviewing Ukrainian assertions that Russia had sent another 10 tanks to rebels across the border, but was able to confirm Friday only that they had left a deployment site in southwest Russia a day earlier.
Ukraine and Western leaders have accused Russia of allowing arms and fighters to cross into Ukraine, a charge Moscow has denied. The Obama administration said a week ago it had confirmed separatists had acquired some tanks and rocket launchers from Russia.
The senior U.S. official said Friday that the materiel being provided consists of equipment widely used in Ukraine, but not in Russia, enabling separatists to claim that they had captured it on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said the cease-fire would last until June 27—the same day Mr. Poroshenko is scheduled to sign an agreement cementing stronger trade and political ties with the EU. It added that the military will respond if attacked, and those rebels who don’t lay down their arms by June 27 “will be destroyed.”
The move comes as Ukrainian forces made a last-ditch effort to regain control of the border with Russia, long stretches of which had fallen into rebel hands. Mr. Poroshenko had said that would be a condition for a halt in the fighting.
Earlier in the day, Ukraine’s defense minister and the speaker of parliament both claimed that government forces had regained control of several border posts abandoned two weeks ago to the separatists. But the national defense council later acknowledged much of the border in the Luhansk region was still unsecured. A rebel leader also said the border remained in separatist hands.
The Kremlin acknowledged it had moved troops back to its side of the border, weeks after Mr. Putin had ordered soldiers in the region back to their bases. But Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told Russian news agencies the country wasn’t massing soldiers again, but had shifted some troops to strengthen border security.
Pointing to the Russian troop movements, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Obama administration “will not accept any use of Russian military forces under any pretext in eastern Ukraine.”
Mr. Earnest also faulted comments by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this past week that equated Ukrainian demands for the departure of militants with ethnic cleansing. “We see these statements for what they are—an attempt to create pretext for further illegal Russian intervention in Ukraine,” he said.
Fighting has raged in recent days even as Ukraine and Russia stepped up diplomatic contacts.
Late Thursday, Messrs. Putin and Poroshenko spoke by phone to discuss the Ukrainian leader’s peace plan, the Kremlin said. Mr. Putin said he was hopeful that it could be implemented and that the demands of people living in the predominantly Russian-speaking regions should be taken into account. He also repeated that Kiev needed to cease its military operation immediately, the statement said.
The Kremlin said Mr. Putin met afterward with members of Russia’s security council to discuss the situation.
Ukraine’s newly appointed Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin also spoke by phone for the first time since taking the job with his Russian counterpart to discuss the peace plan, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said.
The Kremlin also said Mr. Putin was expected to speak by phone with President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande in the coming days. The Russian president is scheduled to travel to Vienna on Tuesday for meetings with Austria’s president and the head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
The U.S. move to freeze assets and restrict travel for the separatist leaders is the latest step in a sanctions program that has targeted high-ranking Kremlin officials, leaders of the breakaway Crimea region and several Russian business leaders and firms tied to the Russian state.
Beyond that, the U.S. and its allies have said Russia would face more serious sanctions—aimed at significant sectors of Russian industry, for example—if Moscow doesn’t move to promote stability in Ukraine.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Friday that Russia would contest American sanctions before the World Trade Organization.
Heavy fighting was reported Friday near two border crossings and in the towns of Krasny Partisan and Krasny Liman in the Donetsk region. Rebel leaders told Russian news agencies that government planes had dropped bombs near the regional capital of Luhansk, which had triggered air raid sirens in the city.
The defense ministry also reported that rebel fighters had attacked a tank repair depot in Artemivsk in the early-morning hours, firing rocket-propelled grenades at the gate, but the government forces had managed to repel the assault.
The Kremlin complained that Ukrainian shelling near the border Friday had struck a post on the Russian side, seriously wounding a customs officer. Russia’s foreign ministry said it was issuing a formal protest and the Kremlin demanded an explanation or apology.
While the U.S. could ratchet up sanctions against Russia at any point, the European Union will have to wait until a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on June 26 and 27. At that point, European officials say, the leaders could add to its existing list of dozens of individuals and two Crimea-based companies subject to an EU-wide visa ban and asset freeze.
—Jeffrey Sparshott in Washington contributed to this article.
Write to Lukas I. Alpert at lukas.alpert@wsj.com
“The Kremlin responded coolly, however, calling the cease-fire an ultimatum rather than an invitation to talk.”
Must need time to re-supply.
Russia is in the right on this one. They are getting one hell of a lot of refugees from Ukraine. Not all Russian either.
Imagine Nevada’s government was taken over and treasury by a bunch of Jewish Mafia Bankers. Then a whole bunch of ranchers and ordinary people decided “THIS DOEN’T WORK FOR ME!!!”, and they decide to print some signs and hold a protest in say Elly. The government goons chase them into a building and burn them out shooting them as they try to escape the flames. Then Other folks decide to take the kidd gloves off and have at them and start putting down their oppressive government goons including a Training General in his helicopter, and a C141 full of MORE government goons going to rape kill pillage and burn.
Thoiugh Nevada and say California may be separate states we still have relatives in Reno, Fallon, Elly, and Wentamuka. I would have no problem with sending them money for weapons or outright going there and giving them what I can, and probably join them. Its a close analogy, because Ukraine and Russia have been very close for longer than there has been a United States of America. When you think of Europe you are talking centuries. In this case since Catherine the Great. Better believe the Ukraine Russians have ties to Russia, just as Ukrainians do. the languages are similar, they are the same ancestral stock (the original Causations). That means White folks for those in Rio Linda, CA. They don’t call it “Mother Russia” for nothing. Putin is essentially trying to preserve both sides by arming the people under attack. It should also illustrate to the world just why you never ever allow gun control laws. EVER!!!! Governments murder their own populations. Especially when the Zionists are in charge.
Absolutely agree.
I meant that the anti-Russian forces likely need time to re-supply.
You’re right. Makes sense. Just commenting on what’s going on there in general. Have relatives in the area. Worry is on my mind about them. They say they are fine, but I suspect the phone conversations are being monitored.