Five Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 33 injured since a ceasefire took hold in the country’s east, the National Security and Defence Council says.

Pro-Russian separatists fired 89 times on government forces so far, but by and large the truce was holding, council spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in Kiev on Tuesday.

• New sanctions against Russia
• Renewed fighting hits Ukraine

Artillery shelling was reported from Donetsk, where a woman was injured, and from areas east of the rebel-held city, local media reported.

However, Lysenko said that the situation was overall better than in previous days.

“This is the first relatively quiet day in eastern Ukraine,” Lysenko was quoted as saying by the Interfax Ukraine news agency.

The truce has been shaky since coming into force on Friday after an agreement was reached between separatists and the government at talks in Minsk, Belarus.

A Ukraine soldier. Photo: Getty

The deal came after a successful offensive by the separatists, which Ukraine and the West say was backed by Russian troops.

The European Union on Monday agreed on new sanctions against Russia but delayed their introduction to assess the ceasefire’s implementation.

EU ambassadors will discuss how to proceed during a meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, Maja Kocijancic, a spokeswoman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, said.

Latvian Defence Minister Raimonds Vejonis said on Tuesday that he was “disappointed” with the delay.

“Russia all the time helps the separatists … The EU must be united and implement the next stage of economic sanctions,” he said as he arrived in Milan for two days of informal talks with EU defence ministers.

But Finnish Defence Minister Carl Haglund said several member states had been concerned that sanctions would hamper the peace process.

“It would be very unwise to cause a situation where the peace process could go into the wrong direction,” he said.

The Minsk agreement also promises “special status” for areas controlled by the rebels, but the separatists said on Tuesday that they insist on independence from Ukraine for much bigger territories, according to Russia’s Ria Novosti news agency.

“The Donetsk People’s Republic that is the whole Donetsk region and the Luhansk People’s Republic is the whole Luhansk region,” Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko was quoted as saying, with reference to the self-declared separatist entities.

The rebels control less than half of each region’s territory.

An adviser to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Yuriy Lutsenko, said that far from granting sovereignty, the Minsk agreement only gives temporary “special status” to those districts not controlled by the government in Kiev.

Separatist leaders said that they would start a new prisoner exchange with the Ukrainian government on Wednesday.

Andrei Purgin, a Donetsk rebel leader, told Interfax that each side would exchange 36 prisoners.