Four Ukrainian soldiers were killed — the largest daily death toll for government forces since the latest shaky ceasefire took effect last July — after an hours-long battle last Friday, north of the separatist stronghold city of Donetsk. Kyiv and Moscow accuse each other of triggering the escalation in the conflict, which has claimed about 14,000 lives since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. The Kremlin accused Ukrainian forces of resuming the hostilities as a prelude to full-scale fighting, which eased in 2015 under a faltering peace agreement brokered by France and Germany in Minsk. “We express concern over the growing tension and express concern that the Ukrainian side might resort to provocative actions that could lead to war. We really don’t want to see that,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman of Russian president Vladimir Putin, told reporters on Wednesday, according to Interfax.
