Ukraine
People sit inside a bus before the departure, as they flee due to the military conflict, in Debaltseve, Feb. 3, 2015. Five Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 27 wounded in fighting with pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's eastern regions in the past 24 hours, Kiev military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said on Tuesday. Ukrainian military say fighting has been particularly intense around the town of Debaltseve, a major rail and road junction northeast of the city of Donetsk, which government troops are still holding. Reuters/Sergey Polezhaka

The city administration of Donetsk complained Monday that there had been overnight shelling by Ukrainian forces on Petrovsky and Kirovsky districts. Preliminary reports suggested that no one has been injured in the alleged attack.

Donetsk News Agency reported that the Kirovsky district had been attacked around 11 p.m. local time. There were direct hits in the settlement of Staromikhaylovka in the Kirovsky district that caused damages to four houses and an outbuilding. Ukrainian forces allegedly opened fire at the Petrovsky district around midnight.

“Damages as a result of direct hits were registered along the Mendeleev Street," TASS quoted the mayor’s office as saying.

In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the Minsk agreement along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. There is supposed to be ceasefire in eastern Ukraine, according to the agreement, which envisages prisoner exchange, weaponry withdrawal, constitutional reform in Ukraine and local elections in Donbas.

It is not rare for either side to blame each other for violating the Minsk agreement. While speaking at a ceremony in central Kiev to mark 24 years of Ukraine's independence from the Soviet rule, Poroshenko warned Monday that Russia had been planning to undermine Kiev's attempts to move towards Europe.

Poroshenko is going to visit Berlin to have meetings with the leaders of Germany and France on the implementation of the ceasefire deal with pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.

"We have to get through the (coming) 25th year of independence as if on brittle ice,” Reuters quoted the Ukrainian president as saying. “We must understand that the smallest misstep could be fatal. The war for Ukrainian independence is continuing."

RELATED STORIES