Pavlopil, Ukraine: Clashes between pro-Russian rebels and government forces in eastern Ukraine have dwindled but villages in the buffer zone around the frontline have been surreptitiously changing hands, raising fears that the tenuous ceasefire could unravel.
Ukraine's blue and yellow flag was hoisted in December in the sleepy village of Pavlopil, which for months had remained trapped in the "grey zone" between Kiev-controlled and rebel territory.
The buffer-zone village had been cut off from food and water supplies until Ukrainian troops started distributing free bread, water and canned meat to residents last month, local shopkeeper Natalia Ivanivna told AFP.
This 30-kilometre-wide (19-mile-wide) demilitarised area, which straddles the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, was created as part of a peace deal signed in Minsk last February.
International observers have deplored recent military activity in the zone by both Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels, which they say undermines the prospects for peace in the region.
Weeks after seizing Pavlopil, Kiev announced that rebels armed with heavy weapons had entered the grey-zone village of Kominternove, some 20 kilometres northeast of the strategic port city of Mariupol.
Separatist leaders denied they had entered the village, but observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported having seen "multiple fresh caterpillar tracks, consistent with infantry fighting vehicles and tanks" there.
AFP
