Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko to meet senior EU officials in Brussels

KIEV, Ukraine, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko intends to travel to meet senior European Union officials before the end of August, a European Commission spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Poroshenko spoke with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and discussed the dire situation in eastern Ukraine as well as the implementation of the Minsk ceasefire agreements, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Poroshenko's office said the leaders discussed Ukraine's bid to win visa-free access for visitors to the EU and the full implementation of an EU-Ukraine trade and political deal on January 1, 2016, according to news reports.

In recent days, the EU has called for cessation of hostilities between pro-Russian separatists and Kiev forces in eastern Ukraine. The Kremlin and Kiev government traded assertions that the other had been responsible for the rise in violence.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been in Crimea since Monday for a three-day visit, in what Poroshenko described as merely a ploy to ratchet up more tension.

"The arrival by Putin in Crimea without the authorization of the Ukrainian authorities is a challenge to the civilized world and part of the scenario to exacerbate the situation the situation, which is being implemented by the Russian military and their mercenaries in Donbass," a statement posted on the president's official Facebook page Monday, as translated by Interfax-Ukraine.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, meanwhile said that Poroshenko -- not Putin -- is the one exacerbating tension in the region through "making crazy statements." Poroshenko had been quoted by the French daily Libération as saying: "Putin wants the whole of Europe."

"A person who makes such statements is concerned more with sustaining Russophobia in the West, thereby distracting from an inability to fulfill what he signed up for," Lavrov said, as reported by Russia Today.