U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he told Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday that Moscow and pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine must implement a ceasefire or face consequences that could hit Russia's economy.
Kerry told a news conference in Geneva that the ceasefire must be respected in all areas, including the town of Debaltseve and outside the city of Mariupol.
"If that does not happen, if there continue to be these broad swathes of non-compliance ... then there would be inevitably further consequences that would place further strain on Russia's already troubled economy," he said.
"There's been a kind of cherry-picking, a piecemeal selectivity to the application of the Minsk (ceasefire) agreements. And as we all know, shooting, shelling has still been going on, and people have still been killed over the course of these last days, so there is not yet a full ceasefire."
The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Monday that the death toll in eastern Ukraine was now more than 6,000 since April 2014.
Kerry said he hoped that OSCE monitoring and the ceasefire deal could be implemented "in the next hours, certainly not days", and he had raised the issue with Lavrov at a meeting that lasted around an hour and 20 minutes.
"He assured me that they are intent on seeing to it that the agreements are in fact implemented. He said he would get back to me with respect to a number of the issues that I raised.
"Our hope is that this will prove to be a road to further de-escalation rather than a road to disappointment, potential deception and further violence," he said.
Kerry said he hoped Washington would return to a state of cooperation with Moscow but that President Vladimir Putin misinterpreted a lot of what the United States tried to do.
"Our hope is that we are prepared to cooperate with President Putin and Russia as soon as they are genuinely prepared to uphold the agreements that they've signed and to live by these international standards."
