The EU announced Tuesday payment of 250 million euros ($267 million) in aid loans to Ukraine, bringing the total to 1.6 billion euros to support the economy battered by a war against pro-Russian rebels in the east.

The European Union promised Ukraine political and economic support in exchange for reforms as part of an Association Accord sealed last year which sparked the conflict and was bitterly opposed by Russia.

A Ukrainian soldier was killed on the frontline in fighting with pro-Russian separatists in the east, the army said Tuesday, its first fatality in nearly a week as shelling rumbles on despite a ceasefire deal.

"In the past 24 hours, one Ukrainian soldier was killed and another one wounded" in the village of Pisky near the airport of the key separatist-held city of Donetsk, army spokesman Andriy Lysenko told a news conference around 1000 GMT.

U.S. paratroopers launched a training mission Monday for Ukrainian government forces who will fight pro-Russian separatists in the east, angering Moscow as the deadly conflict rumbles on.

President Petro Poroshenko welcomed troops from the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade for Operation Fearless Guardian in a rain-soaked ceremony at a military base in Yavoriv, western Ukraine.

The OSCE chief said Monday a truce was holding in a key village in eastern Ukraine and urged rival sides to "embrace a good chance for peace" in the war-torn region.

"The news this morning is that our people, our monitors have brokered a truce in Shyrokyne, down near Mariupol," OSCE secretary general Lamberto Zannier said.

Norway said Sunday it was angry that Russia's deputy prime minister visited its Arctic Svalbard archipelago this weekend even though he is banned from Norwegian territory over Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict.

"We are not too happy about it," Norwegian foreign ministry spokesman Rune Bjastad told AFP.

French President Francois Hollande said Sunday that negotiations with Moscow were under way to find a solution to a dispute over the sale of two Mistral warships, frozen over the Ukraine crisis.

"We are busy negotiating a solution to the crisis," over the 1.2 billion euro ($1.5 billion) sale, Hollande said on French television.

Masked men have toppled several statues of the Soviet leader Lenin in eastern Ukraine, authorities said Saturday, in a fresh show of anti-Russian sentiment as Kiev battles pro-Moscow separatists.

Two statues were demolished at universities in the government-controlled city of Kharkiv late Friday, shown in videos posted on YouTube, a week after Kiev's parliament approved a law banning Soviet symbols in Ukraine.

French President Francois Hollande will discuss the Ukraine crisis with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during a visit to Armenia on April 24, a source in his office said Friday.

Putin and Hollande are attending a ceremony in Yerevan marking the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday said it was critical that Ukrainian authorities quickly investigate the murders of two pro-Russia figures in Kiev.

Columnist Oles Buzyna was gunned down in central Kiev on Thursday just hours after former ruling party lawmaker Oleg Kalashnikov was killed at his home in the capital. 

Hundreds of U.S. paratroopers have arrived in Ukraine to train its forces fighting pro-Russian rebels, the U.S. army said Friday, a move Moscow warned could "destabilize" the war-torn ex-Soviet country.

"Soldiers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade have been arriving over the last week," Donald Wrenn, a U.S. army spokesman, told AFP.