Kerry, Russia say cease-fire in Ukraine must continue
Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart called Tuesday for an end to cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine, but neither offered any sign of moving closer to resolve a conflict that has ruptured relations between Washington and Moscow.
"Anybody who has any control over anybody (in eastern Ukraine) needs to take every step possible to fully implement" the cease-fire accord, Kerry said at a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov after a meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia.
Putin and Kerry also discussed the war in Syria and talks on curbing Iran's nuclear program. It was Kerry's first visit to Russia since Moscow's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and the outbreak of fighting in eastern Ukraine more than a year ago.
The Obama administration blames Moscow for sparking and arming a takeover by pro-Russian separatists, prompting U.S. economic sanctions on Russia. Russia claims it has no direct role in an uprising by an oppressed Russian-speaking minority. Fighting that has left thousands dead continues to simmer despite a cease-fire signed in February in Minsk, the capital of Belarus.
Kerry said Tuesday's talks covered the movement of heavy weapons, which U.S. security analysts say continue to flow from Russia into territory held by separatist forces in a standoff with Ukrainian troops, as well as to Shyrokyne, a government-held border town in southeastern Ukraine that has been under near-constant assault by separatist forces.
Lavrov called for Ukraine to withdraw its heavy weapons from more territory than it had agreed to under the Minsk agreement. There was a draft agreement regarding the withdrawal of heavy weapons from Shyrokyne during the Minsk talks, "but the document was not signed," Lavrov said. "I hope if the documents are signed it will definitely help us reduce the cease-fire violations."
Ian Brzezinski, a former NATO policy adviser at the Department of Defense who is at the Atlantic Council think-tank, said Lavrov and Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine should stick to the Minsk agreement as it was signed. "This sounds like a new Russian creation to reduce Ukraine's ability to control its territory," Brzezinski said.
Meeting in the Black Sea resort city that hosted the 2014 Olympics, Kerry and Lavrov raised the consequences of the Syrian civil war, which is in its fifth year.
"We both understand and fully accept the degree to which the situation in Syria is increasingly not only unsustainable but increasingly dangerous for the region," Kerry said.
The rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State group and other extremists threatens not only the regime of Bashar Assad, whom Russia supports and the United States opposes, but also religious minorities and countries allied with the United States, Kerry said.
Asked about new reports of chemical weapons use by the Assad regime, Lavrov warned against acting on unsubstantiated reports. "There should be no attempt to use the alleged use of chemical weapons as an excuse to put pressure on the Syrian government," Lavrov said.
The meeting came on the same day that colleagues of slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov issued a report he was working on at the time of his murder that documents the Russian military's involvement in the war in Ukraine.
Nemtsov was working on the report, titled "Putin: War," when he was gunned down near the Kremlin in February. Russian authorities charged a group of men with the killings, though the motive remains unclear.
The report was completed by friends and colleagues using his table of contents and handwritten notes based on interviews with family members of Russian soldiers who died in battle in Ukraine. It was published in Russian on the website of former presidential candidate Mikhail Khodorkovsky's civic organization, Open Russia.
According to the report, at least 70 Russian servicemen died in the battle of Debaltseve before the town near the separatist-held city of Donetsk was taken from Ukrainian forces, and 150 others died during major battles last August, according to the Moscow Times.
Soldiers' families received $39,000 and were told not to discuss how their loved ones died, the paper said. In January, Russia started discharging troops from its army before sending them to Ukraine, and the Defense Ministry refused to pay compensation promised to soldiers' families, the report said.
The war has cost Russia $1 billion to maintain a 6,000-man Russian force in eastern Ukraine, support 30,000 insurgents and maintain and repair military equipment, according to co-author Sergei Aleksashenko of the Higher School of Economics. Russia spent an additional $1.6 billion on war refugees, the report said.
Nemtsov aide Ilya Yashin said at a Moscow news conference that Putin lied by waging war while denying involvement, according to Reuters.
"The war with Ukraine is an undeclared war, a vile cynical war, which amounts to a crime against all of the Russian nation," Yashin said. "Putin will go down in history as the president who made Russians and Ukrainians foes."