Moscow, Kiev forge ‘permanent ceasefire’

KIEV: Ukraine’s beleaguered President Petro Poroshenko announced on Wednesday that he and Russia’s Vladimir Putin had agreed to a “permanent ceasefire” in the east of the former Soviet country.

Poroshenko’s office said the agreement was reached in a telephone exchange that was preceded only a few hours by US President Barack Obama’s arrival in former Soviet Estonia—a new North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member seeking Western protection from an increasingly belligerent Kremlin.