Ukraine Modifies 'Permanent Ceasefire' Claim To 'Cease-Fire Process' After Kremlin Refutes Original Report

Update as of 7:15 a.m. EDT:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s office reportedly corrected its earlier statement regarding a cease-fire and changed it to saying that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to a “cease-fire process,” BBC reported.

A New York Times report cited the correction to a spokesperson, and added that a new statement will be published soon.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that Kiev will begin a “Wall” project to denote physical boundaries with Russia, Ria Novosti reported. He also reportedly added that Western countries will send a mission to Ukraine to assess the destruction in the eastern part of the country from the months-long conflict between government forces and pro-Moscow separatists.

“The EU and our Western partners will send their missions here to assess the destruction [in the country’s eastern republics] and in November, we will hold a large donor conference with the goal of raising money to rebuild Donbas,” Yatsenyuk said, according to Ria Novosti.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke to each other over a telephone conversation on Wednesday, and reportedly agreed on a permanent cease-fire in eastern Ukraine's Donbass region. However, the Kremlin has denied the Ukrainian leader's claims.

While Poroshenko said in a tweet that the countries have agreed to a cease-fire, the Kremlin said that the leaders had only discussed the prospect of reducing the violence in Ukraine and did not agree to a cease-fire, according to Russian state-owned news agency Ria Novosti. Details of the cease-fire agreement, claimed by Poroshenko, were not immediately available.

“As a result of my telephone conversation with Russian President we reached an agreement on a permanent ceasefire on Donbass,” Poroshenko said in a tweet.

The claims about the cease-fire follow repeated accusations by Kiev and Western nations, including the U.S. that Russia has backed separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, but Moscow has denied the accusations.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Barack Obama, who is in Estonia to hold security talks with the three Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, over Russian aggression in Ukraine, reportedly said that a settlement was unlikely until Russia stops sending troops posing as separatists into Ukraine, according to Reuters.

Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov had said earlier on Wednesday, according to Russian news agency Itar-Tass: “In a telephone conversation earlier in the day Putin and Poroshenko exchanged opinions and to a large extent agreed on steps that might contribute to an early ceasefire between the Ukrainian military and the militias in the southeast of the country,” adding that “the conversation resulted in a permanent ceasefire in Donbass.”

But, Ria Novosti tweeted, citing Kremlin that, “Putin, Poroshenko did not agree on ceasefire in Ukraine as Russia not party in conflict, but discussed how to resolve conflict.”

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