Russia says ‘hot heads’ in Kiev could provoke violence

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has told his United States and German counterparts the government in Kiev must refrain from violence and abide by an agreement reached last week to cool tensions in Ukraine.

The agreement to avert wider conflict in Ukraine is faltering as pro-Moscow separatist gunmen show no sign of surrendering government buildings they have seized.

US and European officials say they will hold Moscow responsible and impose new economic sanctions if the separatists do not clear out of government buildings they have occupied across swathes of eastern Ukraine over the past two weeks.

US vice president Joe Biden has arrived in Kiev, where he is expected to announce a package of technical assistance. The visit is likely to be more important as a symbol of support than for any specific promises Biden makes in public.

In a phone call today, Mr Lavrov urged US secretary of state John Kerry to “influence Kiev, not let hotheads there provoke a bloody conflict, and impel the current Ukrainian leadership to fulfil its obligations unflaggingly,” the foreign ministry said.

The Russian statement was issued shortly after the US state department said Mr Kerry, in the call with Mr Lavrov, had urged Russia to help implement the agreement reached on Thursday between Russia, Ukraine, the US and the European Union.

Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have ignored the agreement’s calls to stop occupying buildings. But Mr Lavrov’s message was that the onus is on the Kiev government and the West to make the deal to de-escalate tension in Ukraine work.

He told Mr Kerry the agreement was threatened by “the inability and lack of desire of the Kiev authorities to put an end to violent acts by ultranationalists ... and to end arrests and free activists of the protest movement in southeastern Ukraine”.

In a separate conversation with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Mr Lavrov “underlined the need for the strict and comprehensive fulfilment of the points of the Geneva declaration by the authorities in Kiev,” the statement said.

In an earlier news conference, Mr Lavrov said a deadly gunfight early on Sunday (in which at least three people were killed) near the Ukrainian city of Slaviansk, which is controlled by pro-Russian separatists, was a crime and showed Kiev did not want to control “extremists”.

“The authorities are doing nothing, not even lifting a finger, to address the causes behind this deep internal crisis in Ukraine,” he said.

Reuters