But some political leaders and especially members of right wing groups that played a small but instrumental role in protests that forced out the old regime have questioned whether Poroshenko is ceding too much to Moscow.
Media accounts of the broad ranging proposal say it allows local legislatures to set up their own police forces and name judges and prosectors.
Snap local polls on November 9 will establish new councils in the areas in Ukraine’s vital coal and steel belt that will seemingly not be accountable to Kiev in any way.
The measures also reportedly protect from criminal prosecution “participants of events in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions” — a measure that appears to apply to both the insurgents and Ukrainian government troops.
Amnesty International has accused fighters on both sides of abuses that might be classified as war crimes.
– Bloodiest day since truce –
Yet the broader autonomy offer appears to have done little to sate insurgency leaders who want membership in Novorossiya — a charged term Putin uses to describe a tsarist Russia that incorporated parts of Ukraine.
“The government in Kiev is only using the ceasefire to regroup its forces and attack us again,” the self-declared Donetsk People’s Republic leader Alexander Zakharchenko said.
Local authorities said six civilians were killed Sunday when shells fell on a market near the long-shuttered Donetsk airport that had been one of the war’s main flashpoints since Poroshenko’s election at the end of May.
Six monitors from the OSCE pan European security body also reported coming under fire Sunday after visiting the site where Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed after being shot out of the sky with 298 people on board in July.
Western allies kept up the pressure by launching more than a week of US led NATO war games in western Ukraine on Monday that are meant to send a blunt message to Russia about having any thoughts of pushing its troops deeper into the former Soviet state.
Russia has tens of thousands of soldiers in Crimea but denies NATO charges it sent more than 1,000 elite forces to help the militias launch a surprise counter offensive at the end of last month.
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