LYUBA VOEVCHIK lives underground. Her neighbourhood, the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, is close to eastern Ukraine’s front line. When shells began landing on her street last summer, she moved to the dank basement of a local cultural centre, where she and her two youngest sons share a narrow bed with faded pink sheets. Frightened and exhausted, Ms Voevchik has not slept at home in nearly a year. The latest ceasefire has provided little solace. “They should hush up,” Ms Voevchik says with a sigh. “They promised.”
Those promises were the subject of high-level talks between Russia and America last week. John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, conferred with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Victoria Nuland, another American envoy, shuttled between Kiev and Moscow, urging compliance with the faltering Minsk peace plan.
But as diplomats keep talking, the guns keep sputtering and civilians like Ms Voevchik keep suffering. The United Nations estimates that the war has left 5m people in need of humanitarian help. Of the more than 6,000 killed since last April, most have been civilians....
from The Economist: Europe http://ift.tt/1cQ854T
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