From the French news agency AFP:
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko promised to defeat the "cruel-hearted foe" trying to break his former Soviet republic apart, in a traditional New Year's message.
The pro-Western leader delivered the midnight television address surrounded by soldiers and volunteers who handed out food during protests last winter that ousted an unpopular Russia-backed president.
"A cruel-hearted foe has encroached on our lives, territory, freedom and independence," said Poroshenko, without mentioning Russia or President Vladimir Putin by name.
"We will definitely win this patriotic war because for us, it is just. Truth is on our side. God is with us."
The 49-year-old chocolate baron won a snap election in May on a promise to stamp out the pro-Russian mutiny that erupted in Ukraine's industrial east in April and has since claimed more than 4,700 lives.
A truce brokered by Russian and European envoys in September has been repeatedly broken and new talks aimed at consolidating that agreement broke up without progress last week.
Relations between Kiev and Moscow -- accused by both Poroshenko and NATO of supporting the rebel uprising -- are now more hostile than at any point since the 1991 breakup of the USSR.
Poroshenko's name was notably missing from the dozens of New Year congratulatory messages that Putin sent out to world leaders on Wednesday.
Putin and Poroshenko are tentatively expected to meet in Kazakhstan on January 15 for their first face-to-face talks on the crisis since a brief October encounter in Milan.
Poroshenko said that meeting would also be attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.
From RFE/RL's news desk:
France says it might hand over two Mistral helicopter assault ships to Russia if a cease-fire takes hold in Ukraine and a "political road map" for peace is put into place.
Speaking on Europe 1 radio on January 1, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said that so far efforts to deescalate the conflict "are neither tangible nor verifiable."
Russia paid $1.2 billion for the two ships, but Paris has frozen the handover because of the crisis in Ukraine.
Last month, Le Drian warned Moscow that France "may never" hand over the ships.
Russia's envoy to NATO, Aleksandr Grushko, said on December 26 that the failure to fulfill the contract would undermine Russia's confidence in foreign suppliers and "be yet another incentive for becoming increasingly less dependent on foreign components."
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said on December 24 that Paris's position "is merely a demonstration of the geopolitical weakness of France."
Ukraine Says Rebels Keep Up Attacks Into New Year
KIEV, Jan 1 (Reuters) - Ukrainian separatists carried out sporadic attacks on government forces as the New Year began, wounding three soldiers, the Kiev military said, as President Petro Poroshenko told the nation to brace for a year that would "not be easy".
The military said rebels had carried out several mortar and small arms attacks on Ukrainian positions in the east. Local authorities in Luhansk region, bordering Russia, said rebel mortar fire had destroyed two homes in a village on Thursday, killing one civilian.
There was no confirmation of these reports from the rebels.
"New Year's night in the zone of the anti-terrorist operation was not a quiet one," a statement by the military said. "Over the past 24 hours three Ukrainian soldiers were wounded as a result of shelling," military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists.
More than 4,700 people were killed in 2014 in eastern Ukraine in a conflict pitting pro-Russian separatists against government forces loyal to Kiev's pro-Western government. The fighting has provoked the worst crisis in relations between Russia and the West since the Cold War.
Ukrainian authorities and separatists have exchanged hundreds of prisoners of war as part of a 12-point plan to end the conflict. In a fresh diplomatic attempt to restore peace, Poroshenko is preparing to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of France and Germany on Jan. 15 in Kazakhstan.
The overnight New Year attacks underlined the fragility of a ceasefire that has theoretically been in place since early in September, though frequently violated.
Poroshenko, who has acknowledged that Kiev lacks the military means to take back lost territory by force, told Ukrainians on Thursday that they had endured the worst year since the end of World War Two in 1945.
"An angry enemy encroached on our lives, our territory, our freedom and our independence," he said in a New Year's message on the presidential website.
Warning that 2015 would "not be easy", he said he expected it to go down in history as the year when Ukrainians would enact deep-seated reforms opening up the road to membership of the European Union.
The commitment of Kiev's new leadership to European integration following the overthrow of a Moscow-backed president last February has set it at variance with Russia, Ukraine's former Soviet overlord, which wants to keep it within its political and economic orbit.
That concludes our live-blogging of the Ukraine crisis for Thursday, January 1, 2015. Check back tomorrow morning for our continuing coverage.