Reports of violations of the ceasefire in Donetsk and Luhansk come from both the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatists.

Nearly 600 ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine are said to have taken place in recent days alone, according to the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

The leaders of the Russian-led so-called People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk announced on Friday that civilians will now begin evacuating to Russia.

Russian state media report on Friday night that buses with people have begun to arrive.

The news of the evacuation comes after recent reports in Russian state-controlled media that Ukrainian forces have fired on separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities deny that their forces are attacking targets in eastern Ukraine, but instead say that, on the contrary, it is rebel forces that attacked Ukrainian positions.

Big news in the Russian media

Russian evacuation plans have been widely reported in the Russian media, and it is reported that President Vladimir Putin has ordered the reception and protection of evacuated people.

The Minister of Civil Defense, Aleksandr Chupriyan, is said to have been instructed to fly to the Rostov region and to ensure the protection of people crossing the border from the People's Republics.

- Russian media report that it is an attack from Ukraine that is going on in the separatist areas and that the leaders of the People's Republics have decided that women, children and the elderly should begin to be evacuated to Russia, says SVT's correspondent Bert Sundström on site in Kiev.

- But that there would be a military-Ukrainian action against these areas is completely unlikely.

What the Russian population is being fed by is that Ukraine is threatening and bombing these areas.

There is no one else who verifies that information and it is part of the misinformation, says Bert Sundström.

"An attempt to hide that Russia is the aggressor"

The announcement that civilians will be evacuated from eastern Ukraine is a "cynical" move by the Kremlin, a State Department spokesman told reporters at the ongoing annual security conference in Munich. 

"There are further attempts to hide through lies and misinformation that Russia is the aggressor in this conflict," the spokesman said according to The Guradian. 

"There is no evidence that Ukraine is planning an offensive in the region, despite Russia's claims to the contrary," the spokesman said.