Vladimir Putin dives off Crimean coast as fighting intensifies along Ukraine ceasefire line

1	Russian President Vladimir Putin aboard a bathyscaphe as it plunges into the Black Sea along the coast of Sevastopol, Crimea, on Tuesday.
2	Moscow: Fighting between Ukraine government forces and Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine has escalated sharply in recent days, with each side blaming the other for the violence.
3	At least nine people were killed in artillery strikes in villages and towns on both sides of a ceasefire line on Monday.
4	US officials have said that one three-day period of fighting along the front last week was the most intense since a February ceasefire.
5	Neither side has openly renounced the ceasefire, but European monitors of the accord say both have been pulling heavy weapons out of storage sites and putting them to use.
6	Firefighters extinguish a fire at a house destroyed by night-long shelling in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday.
7	The US State Department blamed Russia and pro-Russian rebels for the rise in violence.
8	American officials have characterised the fighting as possibly a new attempt by Russia to destabilise the Ukrainian government.
9	"Russia and the separatists are launching these attacks, just as they escalated the conflict last August," the department's spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters in Washington.
10	"Efforts by Russia and separatists to grab more territory will be met with further costs."
11	Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday blamed Ukraine.
12	After emerging from a dive in a miniature submarine in the Black Sea off the coast of Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed last year, Mr Putin said that, "regrettably, we are now seeing this conflict escalation and the blame lies not with the Donbass militia but with the rival side".
13	Russia-backed rebels pass by a burning house destroyed by night-long shelling in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, on Sunday.
14	Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that the Ukrainian authorities had failed to carry out the political points of the February ceasefire, which he said called for Kiev to cede power to the two separatist regions.
15	The Ukrainians, he said, are "more concerned over how to keep alive Russophobia in the West and how to artificially whip up tension".
16	Before the latest escalation, four vehicles belonging to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe were burned outside the Park Inn hotel in Donetsk, limiting the group's ability to monitor rebel military actions.
17	Russian President Vladimir Putin sits on board a bathyscaphe as it plunges into the Black Sea.
18	Ivica , the foreign minister of Serbia, which holds the chairmanship of the OSCE, issued a statement last week condemning the arsons and subsequent resumption of fighting, at the time focused around one village, Starohnativka, north-east of the strategic Ukrainian-controlled port of Mariupol.
19	Since then, skirmishes have become general along the length of the front, the European monitoring mission's statements suggest.
20	On Saturday, European monitors reported hearing 184 explosions in Donetsk that were consistent with mortar fire on the front that runs through the city's outlying north-western districts.
21	South of Donetsk, along a river that roughly defines the front line, monitors found fresh craters from howitzers and rocket artillery on both sides.
22	People walk by fresh graffiti depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Simferopol, Crimea.
23	On the government side, monitors noted that the Ukrainian army had removed eight Grad rocket-launching trucks from a holding area, where they had been taken to comply with the ceasefire.
24	The separatist news agency DAN reported that artillery fire killed three people in the town of Horlivka and two in Donetsk.
25	The Ukrainian army reported that one soldier was killed in the fighting, and officials said that two people were killed overnight Monday from shelling in a Ukrainian-held village on the outskirts of Mariupol.
26	A third resident of the village, a mother who had been caught in the open with her 10-year-old daughter while running for cover, died on Tuesday in a hospital.
27	Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to Crimea residents and the media after plunging into the Black Sea aboard a submersible craft.
28	The violence prompted the leaders of France, Germany and Ukraine to arrange to meet again in Berlin on Monday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said.
29	Ukraine is preparing to mark its Independence Day next week.
30	More than 6500 people have been killed in the conflict since it erupted in April 2014 after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula in reaction to the fall of a Moscow-backed president to mass protests in Kiev.
31	Russian President Vladimir Putin meets people after resurfacing from the Black Sea.
32	"Its worrying," Mr Fabius told reporters ahead of the meeting between his president, Francois Hollande, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
33	"Military operations must stop and arms be withdrawn | Secondly, we need to right conditions for elections in the Donbass [eastern Ukraine]," he said.
34	"I hope Monday's meeting will allow us to advance on both points. We hope to have a solution by December at the latest."
35	Tourists visit the Cembalo Fortress in Balaklava, Crimea, last week.