BERLIN, May 13 - The Minsk agreement is a "pseudo-ceasefire," President Petro Poroshenko said in an interview on German television channel ZDF aired on Wednesday, Reuters reported.

Despite Kiev and Moscow agreeing to a truce in February, shooting has continued around the coastal town of Shyrokyne, near the strategic port city of Mariupol.

Poroshenko and German Chancellor Angela Merkel held talks in Berlin on Wednesday. Ahead of their meeting, Merkel said the Minsk agreement was still being violated on a regular basis.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called for a halt to fighting around the Ukrainian coastal town of Shyrokyne as NATO backed his demand that Russia fully implement a Ukraine ceasefire agreement.

Excerpts of the interview released in advance showed that when asked about whether the port city of Mariupol was under threat from Russian separatists who wanted to create a land corridor to Crimea, Poroshenko said: "Clearly.”

Russia denies it is providing troops or arms to pro-Russian rebels who launched a separatist uprising in April of last year. It accuses Kiev of breaching the February ceasefire agreement.

Capture of Mariupol port could help separatists cement a hold on eastern Ukraine's Lugansk and Donetsk regions. Kiev fears it could also provide the pivot for an advance along Ukraine's south coast to link up with Crimea, annexed by Russia last March.

NATO leaders on Wednesday warned President Vladimir Putin to waste no time in implementing a fragile peace deal to end the fighting in Ukraine, AFP reported.

Kerry said at the NATO foreign ministers' meeting in the southern Turkish city of Antalya -- hours after talking with Putin in Russia -- that now was a "critical" time for Moscow to fulfill the obligations in the ceasefire agreed in Minsk earlier this year.

He said there was an "enormous moment of opportunity" to bring to an end over a year of fighting in eastern Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia separatists which has dragged relations between Moscow and the West to a new post-Cold War low.

"I think there was strong agreement among all of the NATO members that this is a critical moment for action by Russia, by the separatists, to live up to the Minsk agreement."

Kerry met Putin on Tuesday for the highest level US visit to Russia since the Ukraine conflict erupted in 2013, in a possible sign of a cautious thaw between the two sides.

The talks lasted for four hours and even though there was no concrete breakthrough, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had said that the talks helped the two sides to "better understand each other.”

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned Russia that it has to immediately halt its support of the separatists and withdraw heavy weaponry from the conflict zone, as other officials expressed doubt about Moscow's sincerity.

"Actions speak louder than words," Stoltenberg said.
"Now is the time to act... there is urgency when it comes to fulfilling the Minsk agreement," he said. (rt/afp/ez)