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EU, Ukraine leaders meet as shelling worsens, one Ukrainian soldier killed

27 April 2015 19:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Top European Union officials met the Ukrainian leadership on Monday for talks on deepening trade links and efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, but worsening violence in the separatist-minded east clouded the summit, APA reports quoting Reuters.

As Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko met European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, Kiev's military reported intensifying attacks by pro-Russian rebels in the east and south-east.

One serviceman from Ukraine's government forces had been killed and three others wounded, a military spokesman said.

The EU-Ukraine summit was the first since a political and free trade association agreement was signed by Poroshenko's pro-Western leadership after the ousting of the Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich in a public revolt in Kiev in February last year.

Russia, under sanctions from the EU because of what Western governments and Kiev say is clear support for the rebels, has made no secret it opposes Ukraine's moves to integrate with the European mainstream.

It has secured a delay in implementation of the free trade deal, which will take Ukraine further away from Russia's orbit, until January 2016.

But Ukraine on Monday secured backing from the EU officials that there would be no more such delays despite Russian requests.

"Others want to postpone the entry into force of this free trade agreement," Juncker said in a clear reference to Russia.

"We don't think this would be a wise and a good idea. It has been postponed once. We are postponing, postponing, postponing. We have to have this free trade agreement enter into force on January 2016," Juncker told a new conference.

"After our negotiations, I think that no-one can have any doubt that the free trade agreement between Ukraine and the European Union will come into force from January 1 2016," Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said in televised comments from the summit hall.