{An uneasy calm prevailed in eastern Ukraine on Saturday after Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists signed a ceasefire as part of a drive to end a war that has triggered a deep crisis in relations between Russia and the West.}
The peace roadmap, approved by envoys in Minsk on Friday, includes the exchange of prisoners-of-war. A separatist leader said this process would begin later on Saturday, though the Ukrainian side said details were still being worked out.
The two sides remain far apart on the future status of the rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine and both residents and combatants said they did not expect the ceasefire to last long, but there were no reports of serious violations on Saturday.
“The forces of the anti-terrorist operation support the ceasefire and are closely observing the order of the commander-in-chief,” the spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, Andriy Lysenko, told a daily briefing in Kiev.
In rebel-held Donetsk, the region’s industrial hub with a pre-war population of about one million, separatist commanders said they did not believe the five-month war was over.
Reuters
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