Ukraine accuses Russian forces of opening new front in separatist war
Russia planning to send second aid convoy into rebel-held eastern Ukraine
The Ukrainian military said on Monday a group of Russian forces, in the guise of separatist rebels, had crossed into south-east Ukraine with ten tanks and two armoured infantry vehicles, aiming to open a new front in the separatist war.
Earlier, a separate military statement said border guards had halted the armoured column outside Novoazovsk, Ukraine’s most south-easterly point on the Azov Sea, and local residents, reached by phone, spoke of seeing tanks and other armoured vehicles moving near the town.
“This morning there was an attempt by the Russian military in the guise of Donbas fighters to open a new area of military confrontation in the southern Donetsk region,” spokesman Andriy Lysenko told journalists.
Donbas is the local name given to the industrialised east that has been the scene of a five-month conflict.
If the rebels seized control of the southern regions, they could support the separatist stronghold city of Donetsk from the south with easier access to the Russian border.
Fighting between government forces and pro-Russian separatists has been hitherto concentrated around the two big rebel-held cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.