Ukraine claims it has destroyed Russian vehicles that crossed border

Kiev: Ukraine claims that it has destroyed Russian military vehicles that it said crossed into Ukraine late Thursday through a border area controlled by the separatists.

The intrusion was first reported by British journalists who said they saw 23 armored vehicles crossing the frontier and was confirmed Friday by NATO’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Ukraine's president, Petro Poroshenko, told David Cameron by phone that his country's armed forces had destroyed part of an armed convoy that was seen moving through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night. However, the Russians categorically denied that any of their troops were even in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the reports "fake”.

But the claim marks a new escalation in the six-month confrontation over Ukraine and if verified would amount to the first confirmed military engagement between the two adversaries since the crisis began in the spring.

"The president informed Cameron that the information was trustworthy because the majority of those machines had been eliminated by the Ukrainian artillery at night," said a statement from Poroshenko’s office. The White House termed the increasing Russian activity to destabilize Ukraine as “extremely dangerous and provocative".

Ukraine has long accused Russia of funnelling fighters and weapons across the porous border, including the Buk missile system that is believed to have brought down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine last month. Russian-backed separatist rebels are continuing to fight a rearguard action against Ukrainian armed forces in and around Donetsk in Ukraine, which has come under sustained attack in recent days.

Diplomatic efforts are being made to bring the two sides together. On Friday the Russian and Ukrainian presidential chiefs of staff met in Sochi. On Sunday foreign ministers will meet in Berlin to continue the dialogue.