Pro-Russian separatists vowed today to push their latest offensive in eastern Ukraine further if truce talks with Kiev's pro-Western leaders fail as the bitter conflict killed another 19 civilians.
Plans for the negotiations in the Belarussian capital Minsk were announced yesterday, raising hopes of dialogue after the collapse of a September truce in a nine-month war that has killed over 5,100 people, according to the United Nations.
"Should the negotiations collapse... The Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics reserve the right to pursue their offensive until the entire Donetsk and Lugansk regions are freed" of Ukrainian troops, the rebel regions' main negotiators said in a joint statement.
The insurgents last week pulled out of peace talks and announced the start of an offensive designed to expand their control over a much broader swathe of the industrial southeast.
The urgent new round of talks in Minsk that had been agreed for Friday under pressure from European envoys was postponed due to disagreements over who should represent the rebel camp.
But Kiev said it expected to send its envoy, former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma, to Minsk on Saturday for the talks -- formally backed the Kremlin -- aimed at reinforcing a tattered September truce.
"We expect to sign a document that reinforces the Minsk Memorandum (of September) and the peace plan of presidents (Petro) Poroshenko and (Vladimir) Putin," Kuchma told the Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
"Our main goal is to ensure that the (September) agreement is implemented," he told Ukrainian reporters earlier of the talks mediated by European and Russian envoys.
The insurgents' statement said the fighters were ready to pull back their heavy weapons from the frontline as long as Ukrainian forces did the same.
But they also stressed that the new border outlining rebel-run regions should run along the current front, giving them an area around 500 square kilometres (200 square miles) greater than lines agreed in September.
Local officials and the Kiev military said 19 civilians and five Ukrainian soldiers died in the latest wave of clashes in Ukraine's eastern industrial heartland since Thursday afternoon.
A mortar strike on an aid distribution point in self-proclaimed rebel capital Donetsk killed five civilians.
"A member of my family died here. He brought people in his car so they could collect humanitarian aid. The shell hit his car, he was torn apart," Vera, 56, told AFP at the scene.
