Fear spread through Mariupol today as artillery fire was heard in the city for the first time and pro-Russian forces began to increase pressure on the defenders’ positions to the north and east.
The battle of Mariupol has not yet begun but the threat of an assault will loom over a meeting in Minsk tomorrow where pro-Russian rebels, Ukraine and Russia are likely to agree a ceasefire and a peace plan that strongly favours the Kremlin.
President Poroshenko said he would order a ceasefire at 2pm local time if the protagonists in Belarus signed up to the deal.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, held telephone talks with his opposite numbers from France and Germany to firm up support for the plan.
Details of the road map have not been released but a seven-point plan sketched out by President Putin on a flight to Mongolia yesterday compelled Ukrainian forces to withdraw out of artillery range from every rebel-held town and city in east Ukraine.
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Rebel leaders said they were also ready to sign a ceasefire, although one separatist politician, Oleg Tsaryov, said there would be no truce without “proper guarantees” that Kiev could muzzle the 37 privately-funded volunteer battalions in the war zone as well as the professional government forces.
In Newport, where Nato leaders condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine, President Poroshenko said: “Tomorrow in Minsk a document will be signed providing for the gradual introduction of the Ukrainian peace plan.”
“It is very important that the first element provides for a ceasefire,” he added. “We need people to stop dying.”
Almost 2,600 people have been killed in the five-month-old conflict so far, many of them civilians, according to the United Nations.
This evening thousands of people, many of them in tears, gathered with blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and balloons in the centre of Mariupol to protest against a possible attack on the port, the most important city in south east Ukraine not yet in in rebel hands.
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They chanted “heroes never die”, a refrain heard in Kiev after the deaths of protesters in January and February. Around 25 men in balaclavas and camouflage fatigues were sworn in as founding members of the new Mariupol Battalion on the stage, vowing to die for the city if need be. They had had less than a week of training.
All afternoon the deep thud of artillery fire could be heard from inside the city, panicking shoppers and disturbing sunbathers on the beach. People hunkered down in cellars on the eastern fringe of the city and in villages along the coast road towards Novoazovsk, less than 30 miles away, which pro-Russian forces took last week. Black smoke rose from the direction of Shyrokyne, around ten miles from Mariupol, where the pro-Ukrainian frontline stood yesterday morning.
The city authorities said that Ukrainian forces had repelled a small rebel “reconnaissance mission” to the east of Mariupol and destroyed four tanks.
Fighting was also reported in the no man’s land on the main road north of Mariupol, between government-controlled Volnovakha and rebel-held Olenivka.