BBC Online :
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko says he has agreed with Russian President Putin by phone on a “ceasefire process” for the east.
His office initially reported that a “permanent ceasefire” had been agreed but later revised its statement.
The Kremlin stressed Putin had not agreed to a ceasefire as Russia was not party to the conflict.
US President Barack Obama has expressed solidarity with Baltic member-states of Nato on a visit to Estonia.
He is in the Estonian capital Tallinn with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia and the leaders of Latvia and Lithuania, all former Soviet states which joined Nato a decade ago.
A Nato summit opening in Wales on Thursday is expected to back plans for a rapid response force.
The rebels in Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk have said that there can be no ceasefire until the government withdraws its forces, the BBC’s Steve Rosenberg reports from Moscow.
The earlier version of the statement on the Ukrainian presidential website read: “Their conversation resulted in agreement on a permanent ceasefire in the Donbass region [the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk].”
However, this has now been changed to: “Their conversation resulted in agreement on a process for ceasing fire in the Donbass region.”
The statement adds that the two presidents “reached a mutual understanding on steps leading to peace”.
In its statement (in Russian), the Kremlin said a phone conversation had taken place on Wednesday between the two presidents in which their points of view had “coincided significantly” on possible ways to end the crisis.
