Loading ...Russia accused of opening new front against Ukraine
Kiev and Western allies accused Moscow of launching a new military incursion across Ukraine’s eastern border on Wednesday, as hopes faded that talks held just 24 hours earlier between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko might mark a turning point in the five-month-old crisis.
Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said a group of Russian soldiers had crossed the border in armored infantry carriers and a truck and entered the town of Amvrosiyivka, not far from where Ukraine detained 10 Russian soldiers on Monday.
Meanwhile, the battle for Ukraine’s strategic coastline heated up Wednesday as pro-Russian rebel forces entered Novoazovsk, a resort town of 40,000 on the Sea of Azov. The town lies in a strategically significant location — on the road linking Russia to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol and onto Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Russia annexed in March.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday that the new military incursions on Ukraine’s eastern border indicated a “Russian-directed counteroffensive” was underway.
“Information, which in recent hours has gained another hard-facts confirmation, is that regular Russian units are operating in eastern Ukraine,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said earlier Wednesday. “This information, coming from NATO and confirmed by our intelligence, is in fact unequivocal.”
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