The Best-Laid Plans....

"They hit us with mortars, then brought up two tanks and had a go with those. No one was hurt. They'll try again tonight."
Ukrainian soldier at guardpost near Mariupol

Destroyed Ukrainian military hardware is strewn across the outskirts of Mariupol, where reports of shelling suggest the ceasefire is under threat. Photograph: Anatolii Boiko/AFP/Getty Images

A truce there may be, but sometimes it's just too tough to keep a good conflict down. And the ethnic Russian Ukrainians most certainly believe they now have the upper hand. It's just that they're kind of put out over having to halt their plans to take Mariupol before the ceasefire, it's not the way they planned the issue to come to a standstill, and they're itchy to get going again, now that Russian military finally made the irreversible decision for a full-fledged appearance.

So the Ukrainian military checkpoint on guard at the port of Mariupol was pounded with mortars and tank fire. And more, they feel, to come. The international airport outside Donetsk saw its share of fighting as well, ceasefire be damned. The clashes lasted from evening to the wee hours of the night into morning with orange flashes lighting up the night sky, shells pouring down on the checkpoint held by Ukrainian security forces at the eastern edge of the city.

But the checkpoint remained intact while mortar rounds struck civilian and commercial buildings hard by the military position. According to one Ukrainian soldier who experienced the attack it was Russian troops responsible for the fighting. They opened fire with mortars when they saw Ukrainian tanks at another checkpoint on a parallel road. Supporting NATO's contention that Russian soldiers with tanks and artillery entered Ukraine last month to advance toward Mariupol together with the rebels.

 Moscow would prefer to take possession of Mariupol to ease transit from Russia to its new possession, Crimea. Current links are by air or a ferry across the Strait of Kerch. It would simply be far more convenient to take Mariupol with its half-million population, straddling the coastal road between the Russian border and Crimea. Ukraine is mighty un-neighbourly to insist it remain within its possession. What for, when it surrendered Crimea?

Before the ceasefire when the separatists occupied the nearby town of Novoszovsk they were set to "liberate" Mariupol, then advance across Ukraine as far as the border with Romania. The truce threw a spanner in that plan. Fields around Novoszovsk lie scorched, smoke rising from Grad missiles the day before. Nearby three Ukrainian tanks were abandoned in the courtyard of a kindergarten. Two tanks were burned out, the third, untouched, had a sticker that read "Fuck off Putin" stuck on its turret.

The kindergarten windows were blown out, the roof gone, gaping holes in the walls from mortar rounds. "The tanks came in about six in the morning", one villager said. "As soon as they set up position there, you could hear the booms come in from that direction", pointing at the pro-Russian lines. "See what a glorious army we have", one middle aged woman said: "Parked their tanks up in our kindergarten, now the whole thing has gone."

Clauses in the 12-point peace plan signed by the two sides on Friday in Minsk guarantees early local elections in eastern Ukraine and "special status" and "temporary self-government" areas to be approved. Which would result in an agreement by the insurgent leaders, seemingly unlikely, to accept some measure of autonomy within Ukraine, rather than achieving the breakaway state to join Russia, which was their goal.

Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe are called upon in the agreement to monitor the ceasefire, and secure the Ukrainian-Russian border, and that "illegal armed groups" and "mercenaries" leave Ukraine. A best-wish scenario that Ukraine may have high hopes it can succeed with. And which Russia may view ultimately as the better part of valour, in keeping those furiously-laid EU and US sanctions at bay.