REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, KIEV -- Ukraine and pro-Russian insurgents have reached a vital "New Year" truce agreement that will go into effect at midnight Tuesday in the hope of finally ending clashes in the war-scarred ex-Soviet state.

The announcement suggests that the warring sides were more ready than ever to put aside their guns while they negotiate the formal status of the separatist east and other contentious issues.

Yet it also underscores how Western efforts to end one of Europe's deadliest conflicts since the Balkans wars of the 1990s had resolutely failed.

Kiev's pro-Western leaders and the insurgents are fighting over an industrial region the approximate size of Wales that is home to about 3.5 million people and the centre of the splintered nation's coal and steel wealth.