Debaltseve Fall

From the BBC:
"Ukraine troops retreat from key town of Debaltseve"

 The Ukrainian president says his forces are making an "organised" withdrawal from the embattled town of Debaltseve. Petro Poroshenko said 80% of Ukraine's troops left on Wednesday morning after several days of fierce fighting. Russia said Ukrainian forces had tried to fight their way out of the town after being encircled but Mr Poroshenko insisted they were never surrounded.  The rebel advance on Debaltseve, which came in spite of the recent ceasefire agreement, has been widely condemned. Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the rebels' offensive had put the wider peace agreement at risk and urged Russia to "use all its influence on the separatists to make them respect the ceasefire". He also called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from Ukraine, saying Russian troops, artillery and air defence units were still active in the country.   Eyewitnesses saw dozens of tanks and columns of weary Ukrainian troops retreating from Debaltseve on Wednesday. President Poroshenko said in a statement: "Debaltseve was under our control, there was no encirclement, and our troops left the area in a planned and organised manner."  He called for "a firm reaction from the world to Russia's brutal violation of the Minsk agreements, the ceasefire regime and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry".  Mr Poroshenko visited the soldiers who had left Debaltseve in the town of Artemivsk on Wednesday. Earlier, he said it would be an honour to shake hands with "Ukrainian heroes". A senior Ukrainian military official said 22 Ukrainian soldiers had died in Debaltseve over the past three days.

Earlier, an official at a morgue in Artemivsk said the bodies of 25 Ukrainian soldiers had been brought to the facility from Debaltseve but this has not been confirmed.

 

 

^ It seems pretty clear that the ethnic-Russian terrorists in eastern Ukraine have no desire to adhere to a ceasefire and Russia doesn't seem to want to stop the violence  as they are aiding the terrorists and want a land route to annexed Crimea.  I don't see the EU, Canada, the US or any other country standing up against the broken ceasefire. ^

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31519000