Roundup: U.S. confronts Russia again over eastern Ukraine issue

BEIJING, Oct. 28 (Xinhua) -- As the year 2017 is ending, the United States again has moved to confront Russia over the eastern Ukraine issue, preparing to sell advanced weapons to Ukraine and asking Russia to ease violence in eastern Ukraine, among others.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday, underscoring the U.S. concern with the rising violence in eastern Ukraine and requesting Russia to ease it.

Tillerson had also asked Russia to return its representatives to the Joint Center for Control and Coordination of the Ceasefire (JCCC), which was set up in September 2014 under an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to assist the implementation of the Minsk agreements for settling the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

Russia has said that it will abandon the JCCC, which consists of Russian and Ukrainian officers, due to Kiev's "obstruction" of its activities.

Washington announced on Friday that it has decided to sell advanced weapons to Ukraine to help update its defense capabilities. This move infuriated Russia, which said the U.S. decision will lead to "new bloodshed."

The arsenal sale is reportedly to include Javelin anti-tank missiles, which Kiev has long desired.

"The U.S. weapons can lead to new victims in our neighboring country (Ukraine), to which we cannot remain indifferent," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said in a statement on Saturday.

Ukraine launched a military operation in its southeast Donbas region in April 2014, after the pro-Russia local residents refused to recognize the pro-West Ukrainian authorities and sought independence.

Ever since, Armed conflicts have been plaguing Donbas, having claimed the lives of more than 10,000 people.

Kiev and the insurgents reached a peace agreement brokered by Russia, France and Germany in Minsk, capital of Belarus, in September 2014, with a more detailed renewal of the agreement signed in February 2015.

The pact spells out a cease-fire, a withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the line of separation between the two warring sides, exchange of prisoners, and holding local elections in Donbas.

But the agreement has been breached from time to time, and more than 30 previous rounds of truce attempts have failed, with the two sides accusing each other of cease-fire violations.

On Dec. 20, the Trilateral Contact Group, a group of representatives from Ukraine, Russia and OSCE to facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the war in the conflicting Donbas region, reached an agreement for a cease-fire starting from Dec. 23 for civilians to be able to celebrate the winter holidays.

The Trilateral Contact Group also agreed on a prisoner exchange between the conflicting sides.

The Ukrainian government and pro-independence insurgents in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday carried out their largest prisoner swap since the start of the conflict in April 2014.

During the exchange, the insurgents transferred 74 Ukrainian soldiers and pro-government civilians to Kiev, while the government released 75 supporters of Lugansk insurgents, but two of them refused to return to the insurgent-controlled area. Enditem