The withdrawl of Russian forces in the Ukraine's rebel-controlled Donbas region was discussed at a meeting between Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and the US special representative to Ukraine Kurt Volker in Kyiv on October 27. A statement from Poroshenko's media office stressed the "fundamental importance" of ensuring proper implementation of the Minsk peace agreements, "primarily in terms of the consolidation of a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire and the withdrawal of Russian occupying forces and equipment from Ukraine's Donbas." 

"The parties paid considerable attention to the issue of the release of hostages illegally detained in the occupied territory and in Russian prisons," the statement reads. It added "[Volker] received the relevant appeal from the families of the hostages. The president [Poroshenko] is hopeful for his effective support, first of all in contacts with the Russian side, aimed to ensure their early release and return home."

On the same day, the chairman of Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, Andriy Parubiy said during a separate meeting with Volker that as a result of the intensification of hostilities in Ukraine's Donbas, 10 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the past two months and 162 since the beginning of 2017.

While the US has supplied non-lethal support to Ukraine in the three-year-old Donbas conflict, both the former Obama administration and the current administration under President Donald Trump stopped short of supplying weapons lest this further inflame a conflict that, according to the Ukrainian leadership, has killed 11,000 people.

Meanwhile, Russia denies insistent claims by Kyiv and internationally that it supplies the rebels with large amounts of light and heavy weapons as well as military personnel.