The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, appears to have offered a deal to resolve the crisis in eastern Ukraine, suggesting that if the country's government clears out the nationalist protest camp in Kiev, then pro-Moscow separatists will lay down their arms.
Western officials greeted the proposal with scepticism, noting that such confidence-building measures were at the heart of an international agreement reached last week, but which failed to end the separatists' occupation of public buildings in eastern Ukraine. They said the protest camp in Independence Square in Kiev, erected in February during the uprising that toppled the Russian-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, was already being dismantled.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which is monitoring the situation in Ukraine, reported that its team in the capital "observed the ongoing clearing of barricades in the Maidan square".
"The situation in the capital city was calm," the report added.
One western official raised the possibility that Lavrov might be seeking to use the dismantling of the camp as a face-saving way out of the crisis, but cautioned that there were few other signs of compromise from Moscow.
Lavrov's comments came as the Ukrainian government launched further military operations against some of the pro-Russian separatists who have seized government buildings across eastern Ukraine, having killed up to five rebels on Thursday.
