Ukrainian Forces Clash With Rebels Near Russian Border And Accuse Moscow Of Opening New Front
Pavel Polityuk, Reuters
BusinessInsider.com
Aug. 25, 2014
Ukraine accused Russia on Monday of sending soldiers across the border to open a new front in the separatist war that has devastated the east of the country and provoked the gravest East-West crisis since the fall of communism.
The charge, dismissed by Moscow, dealt a blow to already slim hopes of progress at talks on Tuesday towards ending the conflict between pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops, in which more than 2,000 people have been killed.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who is due to meet Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the Belarussian capital of Minsk, expressed “extraordinary concern” at the Russian move, his press service said, setting the scene for a possibly angry encounter.
The Ukrainian military said a group of Russian forces, in the guise of separatist rebels, had crossed into south-east Ukraine with 10 tanks and two armored infantry vehicles. It said border guards had halted the column outside Novoazovsk, Ukraine’s most south-easterly point on the Azov Sea.
“This morning there was an attempt by the Russian military in the guise of Donbass fighters to open a new area of military confrontation in the southern Donetsk region,” military spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists.
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