13 Killed in Ukraine Fighting

Thirteen soldiers and civilians have died in Ukraine, officials said on Monday, in the deadliest surge of violence since the government and pro-Russian insurgents struck a shaky truce in their five-month conflict.

Nearly a month after tense talks yielded a peace pact and a ceasefire agreement envisioning a buffer zone on the front line, a lasting solution to the insurgency, which has killed more than 3,200 people, seemed no closer.

National Security and Defence Council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said rebels had killed nine soldiers over the last 24 hours, including paratroopers travelling in an armoured vehicle.

Three civilians were killed in the main rebel stronghold of Donetsk, and another local person died in Makiyivka, a city just northwest of Donetsk, when a shell hit a residential house, local officials said.

A Russian army delegation of some 70 people arrived last week in eastern Ukraine, headed by the deputy commander of Russian ground forces Alexander Lentsov. Several members of the delegation travelled to Donetsk to urge the separatists to respect the truce.

"We are going to convince (the rebels), use reason with them. That is the most important thing," Lentsov told Ukrainian television at the weekend, in rare public remarks by a Russian military commander.

Moscow denies having sent regular troops to eastern Ukraine, but Kiev argues that large contingents of soldiers and heavy equipment from Russia were behind a rebel offensive last month that seized control of a chunk of territory and forced the government to agree to the ceasefire.

The European-brokered deal finalised a week ago in Minsk commits the Ukrainian army and rebels to cease fire and to separate themselves with a 30-kilometre (18-mile) buffer zone.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko stressed that the army would continue fighting if the insurgents failed to silence their guns and announced Sunday that the army has created a "reliable frontline" in the east.

Military officials said Monday that separatists in tanks staged repeated attacks on the airport outside Donetsk, a strategic flashpoint, which were repelled by the army, despite losses.

Lenin felled

In a symbolic act of defiance against Russia, activists in Ukraine's second biggest city of Kharkiv toppled the country's largest statue of Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin in the main square.

The eastern hub of 1.5 million people avoided the conflict after an initial outbreak of unrest, but it lies close to the Russian border and is considered by Moscow as culturally Russian, rather than Ukrainian.

Statues of Lenin, seen as symbols of the totalitarian Soviet past, were toppled throughout central Ukraine, including Kiev, during last winter's pro-Europe protests, which led to the ouster of the Russia-leaning former president Viktor Yanukovych.

"Lenin? Let him fall. As long as people are not injured. As long as this bloody Communist idol does not add to the toll of his victims," Interior Minister Arsen Avakov wrote on his Facebook page.

A criminal case into the destruction of cultural monuments was closed, despite an outcry from Ukraine's Communist party.

But local mayor Gennadiy Kernes lambasted the "chaos" and promised to restore Lenin. Fearing clashes at the square, the city briefly closed nearby subway stations.

The five-month conflict between Kiev and the separatists of Lugansk and Donetsk has prompted Western states to impose unprecedented sanctions on Russia, whose economy is already flatlining.

Meanwhile, Ukraine's politicians geared up for another election season as the Tuesday deadline approached to register for snap parliamentary polls on October 26.

Poroshenko last month called the polls as a way of restoring public trust in the parliament, which was previously dominated by corruption-tainted Yanukovych allies.

The rebels say they will boycott the ballot and hold their own votes on November 2.