Debaltseve

Ukraine said five of its troops were killed Dec. 18 by pro-Russian insurgents in the bloodiest clash in the war-scarred ex-Soviet republic in months.

Kyiv military spokesman Leonid Matyukhin told AFP that another six soldiers were wounded in the battle for control of the strategic city of Debaltseve.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Monday accused Russia of this week sending three military convoys to eastern Ukraine.

"Just this week three big convoys crossed our border toward Lugansk, Donetsk and Debaltseve," he said during a military parade in Kiev organized to mark the 24th anniversary of Ukraine's independence.

Fighting in eastern Ukraine has escalated over the past 24 hours, leaving six government troops dead and 12 wounded, a Ukrainian military spokesman said on Tuesday.

 The UN Security Council scheduled an emergency session to discuss the fragile ceasefire in Ukraine on Feb. 27, a year to the day since Russian troops and pro-Moscow forces began seizing ports and cities on the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.
      

A long-awaited ceasefire seems to have taken hold at last in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian military reported it suffered no combat casualties in the past 24 hours - for the first time in several weeks. Only one soldier had been injured.

Britain will send military personnel to Ukraine over the course of next month to help advise and train Ukrainian government forces, British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Tuesday.

Kyiv accused pro-Russian rebels of opening fire with rockets and artillery at villages in southeastern Ukraine on Monday, all but burying a week-old European-brokered ceasefire deal.
   
The Ukrainian military said it could not pull weapons from the front as required under the tenuous truce, as long as its troops were still under attack.
   

A senior pro-Russian rebel commander said separatist forces were due to begin withdrawing heavy weapons from the front line in east Ukraine on Feb. 22, a sign rebels may be prepared to halt their advance as part of an internationally brokered peace deal.
   

Both sides in Ukraine's conflict have agreed to pull back their heavy weapons from the frontline in accordance with a UN-backed truce, a Ukrainian military official told AFP on Feb. 22.
      

Ukraine lost 179 troops in the one-month battle with pro-Russian rebels that ended in defeat over the key eastern town of Debaltseve, Yuri Biryukov, an advisor to Ukraine?s president said on his Facebook page Feb. 21.
 
If that figure is confirmed, it would represent one of the bloodiest losses suffered by the Ukrainian side in the 10-month conflict.