Kiev (dpa) - The Ukrainian government and pro-Russian rebels have agreed in writing to begin withdrawing heavy weapons from the conflict zone in the country's east, both sides said.

Government spokesman Pyotr Kanonik said the removal would begin Sunday and be completed within two weeks, local media reported.

"The document was signed during the night," separatist spokesman Eduard Bassurin said in the rebel-held city of Donetsk. "Everyone has agreed to and confirmed the two-week period from February 22."

A coordinated arms removal was stipulated in the ceasefire accords signed last week in Minsk but the implementation was delayed due to fighting in the rail hub of Debaltseve, which government troops pulled out of on Wednesday.

http://www.dpa-international.com/news/international/ukraine-army-separatists-agree-to-begin-withdrawing-heavy-weapons-a-44300463.html

A good sign, not a done deal.

If we get to March 8th and the withdrawal of heavy arms is done, then most likely it will be hard for either side to start it up again, at least the heavy weapons. It will get muddy. People will be watching.

If Ukraine is not given new "lethal" weapons, that will likely prevent war, at least the sort we have seen so far, at least until they can make some more.

If Ukraine does not start it up again, trying to recover lost territory, I expect Putin will let it be. I'm sure he'd like the land bridge and that, but he'd like an end to the war more. He's got Crimea, and the Donbass as leverage and a veto on EU/NATO, and the rest is Europe's problem, although I expect he will continue to protect the governments in Donetsk and Luhansk, and arm them too; but you see that making them bigger at this point will just make them more expensive. He doesn't want to own it, he just wants to prevent us from owning it. (Assuming he makes Minsk II stick, there will be plenty of efforts to sabotage it, likely from both sides. One of the things about proxy wars like this is both sides in the war tend to go hyperbolic/rabid in order to prompt more support, epecially when they are losing.)

And the Kiev government might fall, and Lordy knows what will follow that. In fact if they don't get the IMF money, I can just about guarantee it.

Once the ground firms up in the Summer, it could all start up again. But a lot of things can happen by then, no telling.

Down the road, this sort of bad blood takes a long time to die.

But it seems to me that this is indeed still precarious for reasons that the MSM never discusses:

The parties in power are extreme and importantly: MINORITY parties. They know that already they can only keep power through intimidation, fear, and disenfranchising much of the country.

So a catch 22 is that federalization could bring democracy back to the country along with a large number of people who voted for the Party of Regions.

That is why I believe they were willing to go to war rather than allow federalization, and why they have been so resistant to what actually would encourage democracy and lessen corruption.

The only way to get to federalization is if Kiev is not armed. So I guess it depends on whether western powers really want "Democracy" or someone who will enforce the elite's interest through violence if necessary.

Maybe it's not what they wanted, but it's not a war zone or a pile of rubble either.

But I have no clue at this point how that might come about. You are correct that as things sit it's going to be difficult. Minsk II has a lot of difficulties, its one strength is that the alternatives are much worse.

But Merkel and Hollande seem to be holding their ground, last time I looked, and between them and Putin they can get their way, if they can agree. However much McCain wants it, we are not sending weapons if the German and French governments say no. But that is a difficult thing for them to do, too, to say no. I get the idea that feeling in the EU is a lot less sanguine about all this belligerent talk, so they might. It is a big plus that the quartet is talking regularly.

A senior British minister ruled out sending arms to Ukraine Sunday as the United States and European nations sought ways to pressure Russia over the conflict in the ex-Soviet republic's east.

William Hague, who was foreign secretary until last year and is still a minister seen as close to Prime Minister David Cameron, said governments should think "very, very carefully" about such a move.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said earlier this month that, while Britain was not currently planning to supply "lethal aid" to Ukraine, "we reserve the right to keep this position under review".

Britain is already sending non-lethal equipment such as light armoured personnel carriers to Ukraine.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/britain-will-not-send-arms-to-ukraine-minister/article/426700

Ukraine plans to begin pulling back heavy weaponry from the front lines of its fight with Russia-backed separatist rebels on Sunday, in accordance with a peace plan whose initial step was a cease-fire that is still being violated, a military spokesman said.

Ukrainian military spokesman Col. Andriy Lysenko told a briefing that the withdrawal was to begin, but did not give further details.

ebel spokesman Eduard Basurin said the pullback from both sides is to take place between Sunday and March 7, but he did not specify whether rebels had made any moves yet. There was no immediate confirmation that the withdrawal had begun.

Both sides are to pull back their big guns and rockets from 25 to 70 kilometres (15 to 43 miles) away from the conflict line -- depending on the weapons’ size -- creating a buffer zone of between 50 and 140 kilometres (31-87 miles).

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/ukraine-says-weapons-pullback-to-begin-despite-ceasefire-violations/article23140401/

Two people were killed and about eight others injured in a bomb explosion at a march Sunday in Ukraine's second-largest city that was commemorating the first anniversary of the ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych, the country's interior ministry said.

The Interior Ministry said the blast was due to an "unknown explosive device" and was being considered a terrorist act.

The violence comes as Ukraine continues to be riven by tension and bloodshed stemming from Yanukovych's fall a year ago. The Ukrainian parliament voted Feb. 22, 2014, to remove the Russia-friendly president, following months of increasingly violent protests in the capital, Kiev.

The Crimean peninsula, where residents largely regarded his downfall as a coup, was annexed by Russia a month later.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/chi-ukraine-march-bombed-20150222-story.html#navtype=outfit

KIEV, Feb 22 (Reuters) - Suspects in an explosion that killed two people at a peace rally in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv had received weapons and instruction in Russia, an aide to the head of Ukraine's SBU security service said on Sunday.

Markian Lubkivskyi, an aide to SBU chief Valentyn Nalivaichenko, told 112 Television that four suspects had been detained in the blast.

"They are Ukrainian citizens, who underwent instruction and received weapons in the Russian Federation, in Belgorod," he said, referring to a Russian city across the nearby border. (Reporting by Natalia Zinets; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Alison Williams)

http://www.trust.org/item/20150222142248-e5m6v/

MARIUPOL, Ukraine -- Despite the Minsk II cease-fire agreement, which was supposed to take effect on Feb. 15, shelling from the Russian side has continued along the Mariupol front and Ukraine's military expect the Azov Sea port city of 500,000 people will be the target of a major Russian assault within the next weeks.

Although some Ukrainian and international media reports make it seem as if the fighting is happening in Mariupol itself, the city has not been hit since Grad missiles showered down on this port city on Jan. 24, killing more some 30 civilians and wounding many others.

The fighting has been happening seven or eight kilometers east of the city along a front line which snakes from Shyrokine on the Azov Sea in a northeasterly direction to the town of Krasnoarmiysk.

A staff officer at the headquarters of volunteer 37th Mechanized Infantry Battalion near Mariupol said that, since Feb. 20, the Ukrainian military has seen scores of Russian armor, artillery and truck-mounted missiles coming across the border from Russia. By Feb. 22, he said, a huge Russian regular force had massed on their side of the border with eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast.

http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/near-mariupol-ukraine-soldiers-embittered-by-orders-not-allowing-them-to-return-russian-fire-381533.html

(Reuters) - Pro-Moscow rebels said they would start to withdraw heavy weapons from the front line in eastern Ukraine on Sunday but the government in Kiev said armored columns had crossed the border from Russia to reinforce the separatists.

The Ukrainian military said the rebels were pressing on with attacks on government forces near Mariupol, a port in government hands that is seen as the rebels' next major target.

Spokesman Andriy Lysenko said a military train carrying 60 armored vehicles including tanks had arrived in the town of Amvrosiivka from Russia on Saturday. A convoy of military equipment had later crossed the border near Novoazovsk, east of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.

He said fighting was in progress at the village of Shyrokyne, east of Mariupol.

http://www.ibtimes.com/rebels-order-weapons-pull-back-ukraine-says-armor-arriving-1823986

---

Violence also spread beyond the separatist regions to other Ukrainian cities on Sunday. In Kharkiv, a major industrial center, a bomb went off during a pro-government march. Three people were killed, including a police officer, and 15 more were wounded, a deputy mayor, Svetlana G. Ruban, said in a telephone interview.

Another bomb was found in a shopping bag on a street in Odessa, a port on the Black Sea. It was defused by the police.

Both bombs appeared to target ceremonies and parades commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine, which was driven out by months of protests on Independence Square in Kiev, the capital.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/world/europe/ukraine-rebels-say-theyve-started-pulling-back-weaponry-from-front-lines.html

What a refreshing change to see common sense written about the Ukrainian crisis. Mary Dejevsky (Russia’s “sinister” long-term plan? A stable Ukraine, 19 February) is right to say that sanctions against Russia, and sabre-rattling by the west, will only make matters worse.

The greeting of last week’s ceasefire deal with “pessimism laced with cynicism” was only to be expected, especially as the UK and US were not involved in the Minsk agreement. We can expect more of “diplomacy’s wrongheadedness” from London and Washington, especially as the Tories will be eager to impress on the British electorate their unwillingness to pander to Putin’s insecurity, acting tough but exacerbating the problem.

Accepting that some blame for the Ukraine problem lies with the west would be a more sensible approach. After all, it was the west that reneged on the promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev in the various talks that preceded German unity. With West Germany being a member of Nato, and the east a member of the Warsaw pact, the need for Russian agreement was imperative, and James Baker, President Bush’s secretary of state, said there would be no extension of Nato’s jurisdiction “one inch to the east”.

Your editorial (19 February) opines that “making the most of Europe’s and America’s economic advantages” is one way forward, but strangely omits the possibility of long-term economic agreements over the supply of gas and oil. With Russia providing around a third of the EU’s oil, and nearly 40% of its gas, wouldn’t a deal to take the same for the next 10 years, at an affordable but considerably higher price than today’s, improve matters, and reduce the possibility of further military conflict?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/22/time-common-sense-ukraine-crisis