Voice Of Post

U.S. alleges Russian fighting in Ukraine hours ahead of cease-fire, The Obama administration on Saturday released satellite images that it said showed that the Russian army had joined rebels to mount a full-scale assault on surrounded government troops in eastern Ukraine, hours before a cease-fire set to take effect at midnight.

A cease-fire deal reached Thursday gave a two-and-a-half day window before the shooting was actually supposed to stop, sparking fears of an uptick in fighting as both sides tried to capture ground. What has actually happened, according to Ukrainian troops, leaders and the United States, is a major offensive on the Ukrainian-held railway hub of Debaltseve. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are said to be bunkered there on a spit of land deep in rebel-held territory.

Russia has denied that it is a party to the conflict, and it was impossible to verify the three grainy black-and-white images posted on Twitter by U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. According to the United States, the images, commissioned from the private Digital Globe satellite company, showed artillery systems and multiple-rocket launchers on Thursday in the area near Debaltseve.

“We are confident these are Russian military, not separatist, systems,” Pyatt wrote on Twitter.

The images built on unusually detailed allegations made a day earlier by State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki, who said that in addition to the artillery systems and multiple-rocket launchers, Russia had also deployed air defense systems to the area near the surrounded railway hub.This is clearly not in the spirit of this week's agreement. All parties must show complete restraint in the run up to Sunday,” Psaki told reporters in Washington.

A Russian military spokesman, Gen. Igor Konashenkov, dismissed the images as “reading the coffee grounds,” the Interfax news agency reported.

The 10-month-old conflict has cost at least 5,400 lives, according to U.N. estimates, and displaced more than a million people.

Intense shelling was also reported Saturday near the rebel stronghold city of Donetsk and east of the key government-held port city of Mariupol.

The violence fueled new concerns about the viability of the cease-fire deal, which left many details unresolved and which both sides have debated since the more than 15 hours of negotiations ended Thursday. The peace effort in the Belarusan capital of Minsk was widely seen as a last chance to quell surging violence before an even larger ground war on the snowy steppes of eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said as much Saturday, warning that if the cease-fire failed to take hold, he would declare martial law and step up military mobilization across his nation.

“We must be ready to change our actions if the enemy disrupts the truce,” he said Saturday at a ceremony handing over equipment to border guards. “Well before Minsk I said that we would have to make a difficult but vital decision to introduce martial law if there is no peace.”