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Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said Friday that a ceasefire due to go into effect over the weekend between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine is in "big danger."

Fighting continued ahead of the cessation of the bitter 10-month-long conflict that has killed more than 5,000 people and strained East-West relations.

The peace plan hammered out Thursday during marathon four-way talks in Minsk, Belarus, had raised hopes of an end to the fighting.

But Poroshenko said that after the agreement reached by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, the offensive against Ukrainian troops by pro-Russian separatists had intensified.

"This is not just an attack on Ukrainian civilians, this is an attack of the Minsk results," he said in Kiev, adding the peace plan is in "big danger."

The ceasefire agreement comes with many questions over how it will be implemented and whether it will stick.

The first test will be whether the guns fall silent when the ceasefire comes into force at midnight local time Saturday to Sunday.

Both sides are expected to start pulling back their heavy weapons from the front lines as of Monday, creating a buffer zone at least 50 kilometers (31 miles) wide.

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which already has a monitoring mission in Ukraine, has been given the challenging task of overseeing the process.

"We need to have an effective ceasefire," said OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier, at a media briefing. "So I'm already concerned that we are seeing this morning a continuation of hostilities."

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Ukraine President: Ceasefire in 'big danger'

KIEV, Ukraine, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Ukraine, fast running out of cash, is awaiting the release of promised international financial aid of $40 billion to pay its bills.

There are fears the country, in conflict with pro-Russian separatists over its eastern territory and directly with Russia over payments for the natural gas it imports, is near bankruptcy and reliant on the International Monetary Fund for rescue. The IMF pledged $17 billion, earlier in February, but the funding has not yet been released.

"This is a very serious financial crisis there's no question, and we're looking forward to the IMF board meeting and the IMF first tranche (of aid) because it's a critical time," Ukrainian finance minister Natalie Jaresko, finance minister, told CNBC Wednesday. "We've worked very quickly over the last two months to come to a program of Ukrainian reforms so I believe we will be doing everything we need to do to ensure that money does come, and comes as soon as possible."

Tuesday Jaresko said Ukraine was looking only at a 12- to 15-month program.

We are not discussing our financial needs for a three or four year program, we are really focused on 12 to 15 months right now. "The numbers I can give you right now are the estimates that you see in the press," a reference to a figure of about $15 billion more from the IMF. "Now we are in the process of discussing that further."

As part of accepting $17 billion in bailout loans in early 2014, payable within two years, Ukraine agreed to austerity measures which included an increase in taxes, the withdrawal of subsidies on natural gas and the abolition of 24,000 government jobs.

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Ukrainian government soldiers on a road stretching away from the town of Artemivsk, Ukraine, towards Debaltseve. Photo: Petr David Josek

Donetsk, Ukraine: Government forces and pro-Russian separatists said they would not carry out an agreement to pull back heavy guns in east Ukraine, pushing a shaky peace deal closer to collapse.

Fighting has eased in many areas since a ceasefire came into force on Sunday, but the rebels have refused to halt attacks on a town where Ukrainian forces are encircled and Kiev says it will not pull back its big guns until the truce holds.

Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe(OSCE) were expected to try to reach the besieged town, Debaltseve, after Germany said it had agreed on steps with the leaders of Russia and Ukraine to ensure the observers had "free access" in the east.

But a call by Berlin for the withdrawal of heavy weaponry to start seemed to have fallen on deaf ears, though officials from Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE and the rebels were expected to discuss implementation of the peace deal by phone.

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"We do not have the right [to stop fighting for Debaltseve]," said Denis Pushilin, a senior separatist representative. "It's even a moral thing. It's internal territory.

"We have to respond to fire, to work on destroying the enemy's fighting positions."

Asked about plans to carry out the agreement to withdraw big guns, he said: "We are ready at any time, we have everything ready for a mutual withdrawal. We will not do anything unilaterally. That would make our soldiers targets."

Ukraine's military reiterated that its forces also also could not start withdrawing big weapons such as heavy artillery, as set out in the deal reached at marathon talks brokered by France and Germany in the Belarussian capital of Minsk last Thursday.

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Ukraine peace deal close to collapse

The main Russian-backed rebel organization in eastern Ukraine said it would begin moving heavy weaponry away from the front lines on Sunday, but the government said the group mounted a tank assault on a village near the Sea of Azov.

Violence also spread beyond the separatist regions to other Ukrainian cities on Sunday. In Kharkiv, a major industrial center, a bomb went off during a pro-government march. Three people were killed, including a police officer, and 15 more were wounded, a deputy mayor, Svetlana G. Ruban, said in a telephone interview.

Another bomb was found in a shopping bag on a street in Odessa, a port on the Black Sea. It was defused by the police.

Both bombs appeared to target ceremonies and parades commemorating the anniversary of the fall of the former pro-Russian government of Ukraine, which was driven out by months of protests on Independence Square in Kiev, the capital.

The current president, Petro O. Poroshenko, called the two incidents on Sunday terrorist acts. He spoke at a ceremony in Kiev where thousands of people paraded for the anniversary, including the presidents of Poland, Lithuania, Germany and Georgia.

The Ukrainian authorities say they are struggling to rein in a pro-Moscow underground movement that is growing more active in Kharkiv, Odessa and other cities, mainly in the east, where the population is predominantly Russian speaking. Bombings and assassinations have been frequent.

In Kharkiv, bombs have gone off in a bar frequented by pro-Kiev activists and in a crowd outside a courthouse. Elsewhere, assailants have fired shots at volunteers collecting aid for the Ukrainian Army.

Markian Lubkivskyi, an aide to the director of Ukraines domestic intelligence service, the S.B.U., said on Sunday that four suspects were detained in connection with the bombing at the march in Kharkiv. He said they had received weapons and training in Belgorod, a town in Russia near the Ukrainian border.

The marchers in Kharkiv had gathered to walk from the Palace of Sport to Constitution Square, where a ceremony was planned to honor soldiers killed in the fighting with the rebels. The bomb, a fragmentation-type device, was thrown from a passing car.

Photographs posted online of the aftermath of the attack showed wounded people lying on the wet pavement while medical personnel scrambled to help, and a dead body covered with a Ukrainian flag a sad echo of the former governments violent crackdown on street protests a year ago.

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Ukraine rebels: We're moving weapons back

Published February 14, 2015

SVITLODARSK, Ukraine Heavy artillery fire roared Saturday in eastern Ukraine as fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists continued hours before a cease-fire was to take effect in the conflict that has killed more than 5,300 people.

Associated Press reporters saw the artillery barrage near the town of Svitlodarsk as well as considerable movement of Ukrainian forces' armored vehicles and rocket launchers along the road.

Svitlodarsk is about 20 kilometers (12 miles) north of Debaltseve, a strategically important railroad junction city where Ukrainian forces have been under siege by rebels. Eduard Basurin, a rebel spokesman, was quoted by the RIA Novosti news agency as saying that the fighters would not allow the Ukrainian forces to escape the city but would be offered the opportunity to surrender.

Under an agreement reached Thursday, the warring sides are to cease firing at midnight (2200 GMT). However, a previous cease-fire called in September failed to take hold and after fighting escalated sharply in January, expectations for the new agreement are clouded.

Officials in the port city of Mariupol meanwhile said an array of artillery attacks hit areas near the city during the morning. There was no immediate information on casualties.

Mariupol is on the Azov Sea and concerns are strong that Russian-backed separatists aim to seize it as a step toward establishing a corridor between mainland Russia and the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed 11 months ago.

Also Saturday, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, posted on Twitter what he said were satellite photos showing Russian artillery systems near the town of Lomuvatka, about 20 kilometers northeast of Debaltseve. The images could not immediately be verified.

Russia has flatly denied repeated Western claims that it has sent troops and equipment to the eastern Ukraine rebels.

The fighting started in April after armed separatists took control of towns and official buildings in the Dometsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine. The seizures began after Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych was driven from power in the wake of months of protests in the capital, Kiev. The separatists claim the new Ukrainian authorities are fascist-inspired and aim to suppress the heavily ethnic Russian population in the east.

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Fighting persists in Ukraine as cease-fire looms