Russian-backed rebels massing to attack key Ukrainian towns

   KIEV (Reuters) --- Pro-Russian separatists have intensified shelling of government forces on all front lines and appear to be amassing forces for new offensives on the key railway town of Debaltseve and the coastal city of Mariupol, Ukraine's military said on Saturday.

   Five Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 26 wounded in fighting in the past 24 hours, spokesman Volodymyr Polyovy told a briefing.

   Separatist gains against Kiev government forces in eastern Ukraine, particularly a rebel advance on Debaltseve to the northeast of the regional center of Donetsk, have given impetus to a Franco-German initiative to try and strike an 11th hour deal with Russia to end the Ukrainian crisis.

   German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who along with French President Francois Hollande met Russia's Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin late on Friday, told an international security conference in Munich on Saturday that there was no guarantee that the peace initiative would work.

   But she voiced opposition to the West supplying arms to the Ukrainian government to help them to defend themselves against separatists who Kiev says are supported by Russian arms and Russian troops. Moscow denies this is so.

   More than 5,000 civilians, Ukrainian soldiers and pro-separatist fighters have been killed since a separatist rebellion erupted in Ukraine's eastern territories in April.

   A peace deal was struck last September in Minsk, Belarus, but the agreed ceasefire was almost immediately violated and attempts to revive it have failed.

A municipal official looks through the window of a residential
block, which was damaged by a shelling on Wednesday
according to locals, in Donetsk, Ukraine, February 5, 2015.
REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

   Artillery and mortar fire on populated areas of the east including the big city of Donetsk itself have taken a huge toll on civilian lives, while more than 1,500 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed.

   The present focus on the battlefield is the town of Debaltseve, a vital rail and road junction which lies in a pocket between the two main separatist-controlled regions.

   Ukrainian government forces express confidence they have enough firepower to hold the town even though the rebels have steadily encroached in surrounding towns and villages.

   A Reuters correspondent who was in Debaltseve on Friday said Ukrainian forces kept up a steady barrage of mortar or howitzer fire from the town even as an operation to evacuate civilians was underway.

   Another source of concern for the Ukrainians is Mariupol, a southeastern city on the coast of the Sea of Azov, which lies between rebel-controlled areas and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Russia last March.

   Mariupol's vulnerability was exposed last month when 30 civilians were killed there in intense rocket attacks from rebel-controlled areas.

   "The situation remains tense. The adversary is carrying out attacks across all the separation lines," military spokesman Polyovy said on Saturday.

   "The Russian terrorist forces are gathering strength for further offensives on Mariupol and Debaltseve. An increase in the number of tanks and armored vehicles in Debaltseve ... has been noticed," he said.