Poroshenko says Ukraine, Russia agreed on ‘permanent ceasefire’

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says he has agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone on a "permanent ceasefire" with pro-Moscow fighters, BBC News reports.

"Their conversation resulted in agreement on a permanent ceasefire in the Donbass region [the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk]," his office said.

The Kremlin, meanwhile, said Putin had not agreed to the ceasefire himself as Russia was not party to the conflict.

U.S. President Barack Obama is meeting Baltic leaders ahead of a NATO summit. He is in the Estonian capital Tallinn with President Toomas Hendrik Ilves of Estonia and the leaders of Latvia and Lithuania, all former Soviet states which joined NATO a decade ago.

The NATO summit in Wales is expected to back plans for a rapid response force.

More than 2,600 civilians and combatants have been killed and more than a million people have fled their homes since fighting erupted in eastern Ukraine in April.

Russia has denied accusations by the West and the Ukrainian government that it is sending troops and military equipment over the border to support the militias, who recently gained the upper hand against government forces.

The peace agreement was announced by Poroshenko's office in a statement on the president website. "They reached a mutual understanding on steps leading to peace," it said.

In a statement (in Russian), the Kremlin said a phone conversation had taken place on Wednesday, Sept 3, between the two presidents in which their points of view had "coincided significantly" on possible ways to end the crisis.

Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told RIA Novosti agency: "Putin and Poroshenko did not agree a ceasefire in Ukraine because Russia is not party to the conflict, they only discussed how to settle the conflict."