SARTANA, Ukraine -- Fighting intensified Tuesday in eastern Ukraine ahead of much-anticipated peace talks, with both sides claiming significant advances. The government accused the Russian-backed rebels of shelling a town far behind the front lines, killing 12 people and wounding 64 others.
The fighting, which the United Nations says has killed more than 5,300 people since April, comes ahead of a crucial summit planned for today in Minsk involving the leaders of France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said the talks were "one of the last" opportunities for ending the fighting.
Ukraine and the West accuse Russia of fueling the rebellion with troops and weapons. Moscow denies the charge, but U.S. officials have said the sheer number of sophisticated heavy weapons in the rebel hands belies the denial.
Poroshenko told the parliament in Kiev that the separatists launched a rocket strike Tuesday on the town of Kramatorsk, more than 30 miles away from the nearest front line. Poroshenko said the first round of rocket fire hit the region's Ukrainian military command headquarters and the second salvo landed in a residential area.
Rebels denied any involvement in the attack and said it was a "provocation" by the Ukrainian authorities. Kramatorsk was the site of major fighting until July, when pro-Russian separatists retreated.
The government-controlled Donetsk administration said five civilians and five servicemen were killed on the spot and two other people later died of wounds at a hospital. It said 29 civilians and 35 servicemen were wounded by the rocket barrage in Kramatorsk.
Much farther south, the volunteer Azov battalion, loyal to the government in Kiev, said on social media Tuesday that it captured several villages northeast of the strategic port of Mariupol, pushing the rebels closer to the border with Russia.
Rebel spokesman Eduard Basurin, in a televised news conference, insisted, however, that the rebels had not retreated.
Oleksandr Turchynov, chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council, visited the Azov battalion Tuesday and said the government offensive aimed to bolster the defenses of Mariupol and "protect civilians from artillery strikes."
The rebels reported advances, too. Basurin said they have surrounded the railway hub of Debaltseve, the focus of fierce fighting in the past weeks, cutting it off from a major highway.
At least seven Ukrainian troops were killed overnight in the east, military spokesman Anatoliy Matyukhin said, and in the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, which faces frequent shelling, two civilians were reported killed and 12 injured.
Amid the escalating hostilities, the insurgents announced a call-up of new volunteer recruits in Donetsk, in line with separatist leader Alexander Zakharchenko's pledge to strengthen his forces to 100,000 men. Rebel official Arkadiy Fedoseyev said he wants to recruit "tank drivers, mechanics, technicians, repairmen."
One 18-year-old volunteer, who gave only his first name, Nikolai, said he had come from the Russian city of Volgodonsk.
"I have no parents. I'm from an orphanage. I saw on television how other people's parents are being killed, and I decided that this was not good," he said, adding that he wants to be a sniper.
The mounting death toll comes amid renewed efforts to work out a peaceful solution in a conflict that has displaced at least 1 million people and left the Ukrainian economy in ruins.
Representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the rebels and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe met Tuesday to lay the groundwork for today's summit in the capital of Belarus.
"We are going to Minsk with the firm will to succeed, without being certain that we can do so," French President Francois Hollande said, adding that he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were committed to do everything "so that there can be an agreement, a global settlement."
Meanwhile, the Kremlin warned the West against sending weapons to Ukraine or putting pressure on Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told the Russian News Service radio station Tuesday that any talk about imposing new sanctions on Russia or arming the Ukraine government would destabilize the situation.
In Washington on Monday, President Barack Obama and Merkel rallied behind efforts to reach a diplomatic resolution to the conflict but offered no clear path for how the West would proceed if the talks in Minsk failed.
Merkel and other European leaders oppose arming Ukraine's military, but Obama dangled the prospect that the U.S. could, for the first time, send lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine.
On Tuesday, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee called for $1 billion in such aid to Ukraine.
Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, the panel's chairman, and Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state introduced legislation that would provide training, equipment and lethal defensive weapons to the national security forces of Ukraine through Sept. 30, 2017, to help secure "its sovereign territory against foreign aggressors."
Information for this article was contributed by Balint Szlanko, Nataliya Vasilyeva, Vladimir Isachenkov, Angela Charlton, David Rising, Geir Moulson, Yuras Karmanau, Donna Cassata and Deb Riechmann of The Associated Press.
A Section on 02/11/2015