Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have staged swearing in ceremonies for their leaders after votes dismissed as a farce by Kiev, which says they violated terms of a peace plan to end a war that has killed more than 4,000 people.
Warning of the threat of new offensive by Moscow-backed rebels, Ukraine’s leader said newly-formed army units would be sent to defend a string of eastern cities.
Nato's highest ranking officer, a US general, said conditions were now in place to create a "frozen conflict", a term the West uses to describe rebel regions carved out of other ex-Soviet states that Moscow protects with its troops.
The inauguration ceremonies in east Ukraine took place even as tens of thousands of people marched in Moscow for "Unity Day", a nationalist holiday celebrating a 17th century battle, revived under president Vladimir Putin to replace the Soviet-era celebration of the Bolshevik revolution. Ukraine featured heavily in speeches for the occasion.
Most fighting has halted in the war in eastern Ukraine since September, when Kiev agreed to a truce after its forces were pushed back by what it and Western countries say was an incursion by armoured columns of Russian troops.
But the frontline remains dangerous and tense, with both sides complaining of shooting nearly every day. Artillery from the direction of the wreckage of Donetsk’s international airport, still under government control, thudded during the rebel leader’s inauguration in the city.
Moscow says the election of Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky as leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics”, which jointly call themselves “new Russia”, means that Kiev should now negotiate with them directly.
Kiev has always rejected this, describing the rebels as Russian-backed “terrorists” or “bandits”, with no legitimacy.
The worry for the West is that Moscow, which has already annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula, will now also exert control over eastern Ukraine's industrial Donbass region in perpetuity, as it has done for two decades in parts of Moldova and Georgia that broke away when the Soviet Union collapsed.
I'm concerned that the conditions are there that could create … a frozen conflict," said US. Air Force General Philip Breedlove, the highest-ranking Nato officer, said in Washington.
Russia’s border with east Ukraine had softened to the point of becoming completely porous, while the line inside Ukraine between government and rebel territory had hardened, he said.
President Petro Poroshenko met his security chiefs and told them he remained committed to a peaceful solution to the conflict, even though he said a peace plan and truce agreed in Minsk in September had been violated by Russia and the rebels.
Kiev says the Minsk agreements provided only for the election of local officials in the east under Ukrainian law, and not for separatist ballots to install leaders of breakaway entities who seek close association or even union with Russia.
Kiev and the West also say Moscow is continuing to provide military support for the rebels.
A foreign ministry spokesman said 100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the ceasefire came into force. Kiev’s military spokesman said there had been more shooting incidents recently and NATO’s secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in Brussels that Russian troops were moving closer to the border with Ukraine while Russia continued to train the rebels.
Agencies