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 "In the past 24 hours one Ukrainian serviceman has been killed and
another five have been injured because of provocative actions (by
separatists)," military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a news
briefing.
More than 4,700 people were killed in 2014 in the conflict, which
has provoked the worst crisis in relations between Russia and the
West since the Cold War.
Lysenko gave no details of the circumstances of the attack which
killed the soldier but he said there had been frequent shelling and
mortar attacks by separatists in areas of eastern Ukraine, including
around the international airport in the big industrial city of
Donetsk.
He said Ukrainian forces were in general abiding by the terms of a
shaky ceasefire agreed in September and were only replying when they
came under fire.
 "In general, our servicemen are not giving in to provocations and
are not opening fire," he said.
There was no confirmation of the reported attacks by the separatists
themselves.
Ukrainian authorities and separatists exchanged hundreds of
prisoners of war last week as part of a 12-point plan to end the
conflict. On the diplomatic front, Ukrainian President Petro
Poroshenko is preparing to meet Russia's Vladimir Putin and the
leaders of France and Germany on Jan. 15 in Kazakhstan.
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Poroshenko, who has acknowledged that Kiev lacks the military means
to take back lost territory by force, warned Ukrainians in a New
Year's message on Thursday that they should be braced for a year
that would "not be easy".
The crisis blew up after street protests in Kiev overthrew a
Moscow-backed president last February and a pro-Western leadership
took over, committed to integrating the former Soviet republic into
the European mainstream.
This set Kiev and the Western governments backing it at variance
with Russia, Ukraine's former Soviet overlord, which wants to keep
Ukraine within its political and economic orbit.
(Reporting by Pavel Polityuk; Writing By Richard Balmforth; Editing
by Mark Trevelyan)
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