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At the front: Ukrainian soldiers
Photo: ANATOLII STEPANOV / AFP
In eastern Ukraine, the situation does not seem to calm down after a new attempt at a ceasefire.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported on Saturday night of more than 200 violations in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
This information is based on observations made on Thursday.
The parties to the conflict had previously agreed to return to a ceasefire that had been agreed a year and a half ago.
The Ukrainian army announced on Saturday morning that the opposing side had violated the agreement five times the day before.
A soldier was injured.
This information could not be verified independently at first.
As mediators, Germany and France called for "full compliance" with the armistice shortly before Christmas.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine has been going on since 2014. According to United Nations estimates, more than 13,000 people have died there so far.
Reports of alleged Russian preparations for an invasion of Ukraine have been causing international concern for weeks.
Russia had rejected that.
According to the Interfax agency, the Russian military reported on Saturday that more than 1,000 soldiers with tanks and helicopters had held a maneuver near Voronezh on the border with Ukraine.
A day earlier, an important security advisor to the Ukrainian president had assessed the risk of an imminent Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine as low.
The government in Kiev has not yet identified a "critical increase" in the number of Russian troops at the joint border, said the head of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, Oleksiy Danilov, on Friday.
Kiev estimates that the number of Russian soldiers has increased from around 93,000 in October to 104,000.
According to Moscow, an incendiary attack has meanwhile been carried out on the Russian consulate general in the western Ukrainian city of Lviv (Lemberg).
The Russian Foreign Ministry announced that the Consulate General was the target of a "terrorist attack" early on Friday morning.
Nobody was injured.
The ministry spoke of a "scandalous and unacceptable act."
Lviv police confirmed that there had been an attack with a Molotov cocktail on the premises of the Russian Consulate General.
However, the building was not damaged.
An investigation into "hooliganism" has been opened.
dop / dpa / AFP