KIEV, Ukraine — Four Ukrainian troops were killed as forces carried out more than 100 attacks on rebel positions, a military official said Wednesday, two days after Ukraine’s president ended a unilateral cease-fire in the country’s unsettled east.
The foreign ministers of Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia met in Berlin in search of a way to restart peace efforts and de-escalate a conflict that has taken over 400 lives since April.
Fighting in eastern Ukraine has increased since the much-violated 10-day cease-fire expired Monday. President Petro Poroshenko said conditions for further talks had not been met as rebels refused to disarm, permit international monitoring or hand back seized border posts.
National Security and Defense Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said three troops died in rebel attacks on government vehicles and checkpoints and 10 were wounded. The federal border guards said one guardsman was killed when the Novoazovsk crossing point came under attack by rebels with mortars in the Donetsk region.
Donetsk is one of two eastern regions that have declared independence from the government in Kiev. Ukrainian officials said pro-Russian rebels had been forced out of three villages.
Border posts have become a key issue, since Ukraine and the United States say military equipment and reinforcements are flowing across the border from Russia, which Russia denies.
Ukraine said it recaptured a key border post Tuesday at Dovzhanskiy, which rebels had mined with explosives.
Another one of the main crossings, at Izvaryne, was closed Wednesday because of fighting. An AP reporter saw plumes of black smoke rising above the crossing. Ukrainian officials said rebels shelled Ukrainian troops in the area and a Ukrainian armored vehicle was destroyed by a mine near the crossing.
Fighting also was underway in Luhansk, the other eastern region where separatists have declared independence. In the city of Luhansk, a missile that appeared to have been fired from the air hit a school near a rebel position. The attack happened overnight and no injuries were reported.
To the north, a steady, deep rumbling could be heard from shelling near the town of Metalist.
In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she “cannot rule out that we will have to go further” in imposing sanctions on Russia.
The EU and the United States have already imposed targeted sanctions mostly hitting individual officials in Russia and have held off on more costly sanctions on entire industries.
“We will not let up … in seeking diplomatic solutions to the conflict, but we are still far from where we would like to be,” she said after meeting with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, prior to the foreign ministers’ meeting.
