Unrest, deaths test Ukraine cease-fire

Ukraine’s 3-week-old cease-fire suffered its most flagrant violations over the past 24 hours when outbreaks of fighting and artillery exchanges killed at least 12 people, Ukrainian and pro-Russia separatist sources reported Monday.

Anti-communist unrest in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, also signaled an ominous change in the volatile atmosphere in eastern Ukraine. Demonstrators in and around Kharkiv pulled down two statues of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin over the weekend in an action denounced by Russia as vandalism and disrespect for regional history but defended by Ukrainian leaders.

Nine Ukrainian military personnel were killed in the Donetsk area in fighting that flared late Sunday and persisted through Monday, said Col. Andriy Lysenko of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council.

A report on the city of Donetsk website maintained by pro-Russia militants said three civilians died in the shelling of suburban areas of the city, once home to 1 million residents. Hundreds of thousands of residents from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions have fled the fighting that began in late March and has killed more than 3,000.

Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million that is a neighbor to the embattled regions but has been relatively peaceful during the government’s fight against Russian-backed separatists, was rocked by demonstrations in recent days, one of which culminated in the toppling Sunday of the city’s main monument to Lenin. Another monument to Lenin was destroyed in Dergachi, in the Kharkiv region, Russian media reported.