Ukraine troops retreat from key town of Debaltseve

The Ukrainian president says his
forces are making an "organised"
withdrawal from the embattled town
of Debaltseve.

Petro Poroshenko said 80% of Ukraine's
troops left on Wednesday morning after
several days of fierce fighting.
Russia said Ukrainian forces had tried to
fight their way out of the city after being
encircled but Mr Poroshenko insisted
they were never surrounded.
The rebel advance on Debaltseve, which
came in spite of the recent ceasefire
agreement, has been widely condemned.
Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said the
rebels' offensive had put the wider
peace agreement at risk and urged Russia
to "use all its influence on the separatists
to make them respect the ceasefire".
He also called on Moscow to withdraw its
forces from Ukraine, saying Russian
troops, artillery and air defence units
were still active in the country.
Earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov insisted the rebels' actions in
Debaltseve had not violated the
ceasefire because it was a rebel-held city
when the peace agreement was signed
last week.
He urged rebels to provide troops who
surrendered with food and clothes and
said he hoped the situation in the city
would "not be used to find a pretext to
actually undermine [the agreement]".
Eyewitnesses saw dozens of tanks and
columns of weary Ukrainian troops
retreating from Debaltseve on
Wednesday.
Russia's state-controlled Channel One TV
showed footage of what it said were
rebels raising their flag on top of a high-
rise building in the city.
One rebel commander in Debaltseve told
the BBC that conditions were dire, with
no electricity and a shortage of food and
water. He said rebels were sharing their
rations with the remaining civilians.
'Brutal violation'
President Poroshenko said in a
statement: "Debaltseve was under our
control, there was no encirclement, and
our troops left the area in a planned and
organised manner."
He called for "a firm reaction from the
world to Russia's brutal violation of the
Minsk agreements, the ceasefire regime
and the withdrawal of heavy weaponry".
Mr Poroshenko visited the soldiers who
had left Debaltseve in the town of
Artemivsk on Wednesday. Earlier, he said
it would be an honour to shake hands
with "Ukrainian heroes".
A senior Ukrainian military official said 22
Ukrainian soldiers had died in Debaltseve
over the past three days.
Earlier, an official at a morgue in
Artemivsk said the bodies of 25 Ukrainian
soldiers had been brought to the facility
from Debaltseve but this has not been
confirmed.
Rebels have claimed that hundreds of
Ukrainian troops were killed in clashes
around the city, but Mr Poroshenko
denied this.
The government in Kiev admitted that
that some soldiers were taken prisoner
in Debaltseve, but gave no details on
how many were seized.