President Poroshenko told Ukrainians that the threat of full-scale invasion remained, asserting that some 50,000 Russian troops were massed on Ukraine’s eastern borders with a further 9,000 inside the self-declared rebel republics themselves.
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Poroshenko, French President Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will gather to discuss implementation of the Minsk cease-fire agreement.
Monday’s talks will be the three leaders’ first meeting since marathon peace talks in Belarussian capital of Minsk in February brought in a truce that has since been breached by nearly daily shelling on the front line.
Poroshenko, speaking at a military rally on Saturday, said pressure from Russian Federation and the separatists it backs was likely to last decades.
Russian Federation should “stop playing with agreements”, Poroshenko said at a diplomatic gathering after his appearance at the Independence Day parade. Moscow is not sending its representative to Berlin, but said it would watch the meeting closely. Pro-Russian separatists took up arms in the east after Russia annexed Crimea in March 2014 in response to the overthrow of a pro-Moscow president in Kyiv by street protests.
Despite Western sanctions that “deal Russia’s economy a hard blow”, Moscow “has still not given up the idea of a direct intervention or a rebel assault in the country’s interior”, Poroshenko said.
Soldiers who had fought in the east marched through Kiev, cheered by Ukrainians, majority wearing their national dress of embroidered shirts.
He warned the crowd that the 25th year of independence will be precarious.
“We’ve existed in the past and now – and will continue to exist”, Poroshenko said in a speech marking Ukraine’s 1991 independence following the collapse of the Soviet Union. “The smallest careless step could be fatal”, he went on to say.
There have been ceremonies in the centre of Kiev, including a show of military might.
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The demonstrators held placards reading “Poroshenko, you have blood on your hands”, “No to Fascism!”, and “We are against the war”.
