Four-way talks to solve crisis

Pro-Russian supporters applaud the gunmen outside the regional Security Service building in Lugansk, eastern Ukraine, yesterday. Photo: AFP

Ukraine yesterday said that pro-Russian militants had freed 56 "hostages" after US and EU diplomats set up their first direct talks with Moscow and Kiev aimed at resolving the worst East-West standoff since the Cold War.
Ukraine's SBU security service said the group walked free from its headquarters in Lugansk after separatists seized the building and other key government offices at the weekend in the mainly Russian-speaking eastern industrial heartland.
The separatist raids have drawn Western charges that Russia -- its troops already massed along Ukraine's border in response to its ouster of a Moscow-backed regime -- is backing the separatists and plotting to grab more territory after annexing Crimea last month.
But US and EU diplomats also crucially agreed with Moscow that it was time to deescalate the worst European security crisis in decades by setting up a four-way round of negotiations involving Kiev next week.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton's office confirmed she would meet US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov along with his Ukrainian counterpart Andriy Deshchytsya in one of the European capitals, possibly on April 17.
The breakthrough agreement was reached after hundreds of irate activists occupied a series of strategic buildings in the east at the weekend and declared independence for the bustling region of Donetsk.
Ukraine's embattled leaders poured extra security forces into the flashpoint regions and regained control of the government seat in Kharkiv on Tuesday after a night of violence that included petrol bombs and stun grenades being hurled at police.
But the militants remain holed up behind barricades of razor wire and old tyres in the administration building in Donetsk and the SBU headquarters in Lugansk -- the site of the alleged hostage taking.
The SBU had accused the Kalashnikov-wielding separatists of rigging the building with explosives and refusing to let 60 people already inside "leave the building and return home".
The claim sparked fears that Kiev's Western-backed leaders had run out of patience and were preparing to storm the occupied offices after labelling the separatists "terrorists".
However, the United States said it was going into an upcoming meeting with Russia, Europe and Ukraine on the crisis in the former Soviet republic with low expectations.
"I have to say that we don't have high expectations for these talks but we do believe it is very important to keep that diplomatic door open and will see what they bring," said Victoria Nuland, assistant secretary of state for European affairs.
Months of deadly political turmoil threaten not only to break up the vast nation on the European Union's eastern frontier along its ethnic divisions but also plunge Moscow's relations with the West to a low that may take decades to repair.
Kerry appeared to cast aside the last vestiges of diplomatic decorum Tuesday by explicitly accusing the Kremlin of sending operatives into eastern Ukraine to foment unrest.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague backed up that message by noting the flareup bore "all the hallmarks of a Russian strategy to destabilise Ukraine".
And Nato chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen reaffirmed on a visit to Paris that Moscow would be making a "historic mistake" if it were to intervene in Ukraine any further.
But the Russian foreign ministry yesterday argued that "the United States and Ukraine have no reason to worry" because Moscow had no intention to invade its ex-Soviet neighbour.