KIEV, June 29 /ITAR-TASS/. Several hundred Ukrainian activists, including commanders of the pro-Kiev Donbass battalion, gathered near the Ukrainian presidential administration building to demand an end to the ceasefire in east Ukraine.

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko announced a ceasefire between Ukraine’s military involved in Kiev’s punitive operation in southeast Ukraine and local self-defense militia from June 20 to June 27. He later extended the truce until June 30 in an attempt to seek peaceful ways of ending the armed conflict.

Donbass battalion commander Semyon Semenchenko who had urged Ukrainians to hold the rally near the presidential administration’s building asked demonstrators to behave “in a civilized manner” while another Donbass battalion representative read out a petition to Poroshenko on behalf of Ukrainians with a demand to “stop the truce, impose a martial law in the country, provide the military with necessary armaments and measures to destroy terrorists and request the EU and the USA to impose a third round of sanctions against Russia.”

Kiev’s punitive operation against federalization supporters in Ukraine’s east involving armored vehicles, heavy artillery and attack aviation has killed hundreds of people, including civilians, left buildings destroyed and damaged and forced tens of thousands to cross the border from Ukraine to Russia.