Ukraine rebel leaders sworn in; Kiev says peace plan violated

Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine staged swearing-in ceremonies for their leaders on Tuesday after conducting votes dismissed as a farce by Kiev, which says the separatists violated terms of a peace plan to end a conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people. The United States has also criticized the separatists’ elections as potentially provocative.

Warning of the threat of new offensive by Moscow-backed rebels, Ukraine's leader said newly formed army units would be sent to defend a string of eastern cities.

NATO's highest-ranking officer, a U.S. general, said conditions were now in place to create a "frozen conflict" — a term the West uses to describe rebel regions that are carved out of other ex-Soviet states, and that Moscow protects with its troops.

The inauguration ceremonies in eastern Ukraine took place even as tens of thousands of people marched in Moscow for "Unity Day,” a nationalist holiday that celebrates a 17th-century battle and was revived under President Vladimir Putin to replace the Soviet-era celebration of the Bolshevik revolution. Ukraine featured heavily in speeches for that occasion.

Most fighting has halted in the conflict in eastern Ukraine since September, when Kiev agreed to a truce after its forces were pushed back by what it and Western countries say was an incursion by armored columns of Russian troops.

But the frontline remains dangerous and tense, with both sides complaining of shooting nearly every day. Artillery from the direction of the wreckage of Donetsk's international airport, still under government control, thudded during the rebel leader's inauguration in the city.

Moscow says the election of Alexander Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky as leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk "People's Republics” — which jointly call themselves "new Russia” — means that Kiev should now negotiate with them directly.

Kiev has consistently rejected this idea, describing the rebels as Russian-backed "terrorists" or "bandits” with no legitimacy.

The worry for the West is that Moscow, which has already annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, will now also exert control over eastern Ukraine's industrial Donbass region in perpetuity, as it has done for two decades in parts of Moldova and Georgia that broke away when the Soviet Union collapsed.

"I'm concerned that the conditions are there that could create … a frozen conflict," U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the highest-ranking NATO officer, said in Washington.

White House spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said Monday that the elections violated Ukraine's constitution and basic electoral standards.

Russia's border with east Ukraine had softened to the point of becoming completely porous, while the line inside Ukraine between government and rebel territory has hardened, he said.

President Petro Poroshenko met his security chiefs and told them he remained committed to a peaceful solution to the conflict, even though he said a peace plan and truce agreed in Minsk in September had been violated by Russia and the rebels.

Kiev says the Minsk agreements provided only for the election of local officials in the east under Ukrainian law — not for separatist ballots to install leaders of breakaway entities that seek close association or even union with Russia.

Kiev and the West also say Moscow is continuing to provide military support for the rebels.

A foreign ministry spokesman said 100 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the cease-fire came into force. Kiev's military spokesman said there had been more shooting incidents recently, and NATO's secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, said in Brussels that Russian troops were moving closer to the border with Ukraine while Russia continued to train the rebels.

Wire services