BBC Online :
The West has warned Russia of new sanctions after fighting flared up in eastern Ukraine despite a truce between the government and pro-Russian rebels.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Berlin that new sanctions could be applied if efforts to stabilise the situation were not speeded up.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said inaction by Russia would mean a stronger case for sanctions.
President Petro Poroshenko warned he might end the truce due to violations. The ceasefire began on Friday. On Tuesday, a Ukrainian military helicopter was shot down with the loss of nine lives.
There was fighting overnight into Wednesday near the Russian border in Luhansk region.
The Ukrainian military accused the rebels on Wednesday of breaking the ceasefire 44 times since it began. A separatist leader said there had “been no ceasefire”.
The truce is part of Ukraine’s plan to end two months of fighting between government troops and pro-Russian insurgents who control key buildings in towns and cities across the east. More than 420 people have been killed in the region since mid-April, the UN estimates.
President Poroshenko is expected to unveil proposals for constitutional reform to give regions greater self-government when he attends parliament on Thursday.
On Friday, he is due to sign the long-delayed association agreement with the EU – a pact that was rejected in January by then President Viktor Yanukovych under heavy pressure from Russia.
Mrs Merkel welcomed the surprise decision by Russian President Vladimir Putin to cancel a parliamentary resolution authorising him to use Russian forces in Ukraine.
The cancellation was ratified by Russia’s upper house of parliament on Wednesday.
While Mrs Merkel said the decision was “psychologically important”, she told German parliament that Ukrainian soldiers continued to die.
One would suspect that the Ukrainian government’s truce in the east is now a dead letter. Public outrage alone would seem to demand some sort of military retaliation.
And if the Ukrainian government uses force, then very likely the Ukrainian insurgents and their Russian comrades-in-arms will answer in kind. An escalation seems inevitable.
At this point, it is close to impossible to determine why the militants decided to carry out such a provocative act, just one day after they declared a ceasefire. Maybe this was some rogue element. Maybe the insurgents were never serious. Maybe Moscow told them to do it.
Whatever the reason, the hopes of just 24 hours ago, that Ukraine’s east could finally see peace, if only temporarily, ring especially hollow. “Progress is slow… Diplomatic solutions are always preferable but if nothing else works, sanctions can be put back on the agenda,” she said.
Her Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said in Brussels that the helicopter attack showed “just how fragile the situation is and how fast progress made can be destroyed… by the separatists on the ground”.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was also in Brussels for a meeting of Nato ministers, said the downing of the helicopter was hard to reconcile with Putin’s avowed support for peace in Ukraine. Nato accused Russia of failing to respect “international commitments”.
In a statement, Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Moscow was “using a new different type of warfare against Ukraine” and he promised a “package of long-term support measures for Ukraine, including the creation of new trust funds”.
