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Ukraine’s leader urges peacekeeping mission for the east

A man pushed a cart along a street Monday on the outskirts of Debaltseve, Ukraine. A cease-fire agreement has reportedly curbed fighting in the region.Andrew Burton/Getty Images

KIEV — Ukraine’s president signed a decree Monday opening the way to a formal request for international peacekeepers to be stationed in eastern regions where government forces have been battling Russian-backed separatists.

Petro Poroshenko’s office said the appeal for a contingent of peacekeepers will be addressed to the United Nations and the European Union. His office gave no specific details on the mission’s composition or any timetable for it. Russia is strongly against the idea.

Fighting has waned substantially in eastern Ukraine in recent days as a cease-fire forged last month increasingly takes effect, but both sides have complained of sporadic violations.

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A military spokesman, Colonel Andriy Lysenko, said Monday that one serviceman was killed and another four were wounded over the previous day. He did not specify the circumstances of those casualties.

The UN human rights office has raised its toll of the fighting, saying more than 6,000 people have died since the conflict began in April.

Under terms of the cease-fire accord, the warring sides must pull back their heavy weaponry by distances of between 30 miles and 90 miles from the front line. That drawback started last week, although progress has been uncertain.

Separatist military spokesman Eduard Basurin said Sunday that rebels have pulled back all their weaponry as stipulated in the peace agreement. That has yet to be confirmed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is overseeing the withdrawal process.

Lysenko accused separatists of making a show of drawing back weapons, only to return them to their original front line positions at night. He said Ukrainian troops would continue their own withdrawals only if the situation did not worsen.

‘‘It is too early to talk about this, as every day we see violations of the cease-fire, including with the use of heavy weapons that the militants ought to have withdrawn,’’ he said.

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Secretary of State John Kerry met Monday with his Russian counterpart in Geneva in what appeared to be less than amicable talks amid the continuing tensions over Ukraine. Neither man smiled or spoke substantively as they shook hands at the start of the talks, which took place after Kerry last week told Congress Russian officials have lied ‘‘to my face’’ about their role in Ukraine.

That comment drew a rebuke from the Russian foreign ministry. US officials have pointed out that Kerry did not specifically accuse Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov of lying to him.

While Russia denies its troops are fighting in Ukraine, the United Nations has cited ‘‘credible reports [that] indicate a continuing flow of heavy weaponry and foreign fighters’’ from Russia.

Ukraine has been steadily intensifying its war readiness since the conflict in the east broke, and it has embarked on numerous waves of partial military mobilizations.

Updating its casualty figures on the conflict, the United Nations said Monday that a sharp escalation in recent fighting had left more than 800 people dead and more than 3,400 wounded, with hundreds missing and many buried without their deaths being recorded.

The UN report also drew attention to the plight of civilians in areas of conflict, saying that attempted evacuations in government-controlled areas had been targeted by shelling.