Ukraine: Nationalists protest peace deal on separatist areas

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — About 5,000 Ukrainian nationalists have marched across the capital Kyiv Thursday to demand the repudiation of peace agreements for eastern Ukraine that promised a broad autonomy to the separatist regions. The participants in Thursday’s march also denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s efforts to secure a lasting cease-fire along the tense line of contact in the conflict with Russia-backed separatists. The conflict in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland erupted in 2014, weeks after Moscow annexed the Crimean Peninsula. The fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebels has killed more than 14,000. A 2015 peace deal has helped end large-scale battles, but sporadic skirmishes have continued and efforts to achieve a political settlement have failed.