Ukraine Says Russian Military Force, Including 32 Tanks, Has Crossed Border Into Luhansk Region of the Eastern Ukraine

Neil MacFarquhar

November 7, 2014

Ukraine Accuses Russia of Sending Tanks and Troops Across Border

MOSCOW — Ukraine accused Russia on Friday of dispatching tanks, troops and other weaponry across the border to bolster separatists who control a small eastern portion of Ukraine, the latest in a series of charges and countercharges that are gradually undermining a tenuous peace plan signed two months ago.

Speaking in Kiev, the capital, Col. Andriy Lysenko, a Ukrainian military spokesman, said 32 tanks, 16 howitzers and 30 trucks hauling ammunition and fighters crossed into the Luhansk region from Russia.

He presented no clear evidence to support the claim, nor did the wealth of social media outlets in eastern Ukraine display any footage of a tank convoy. The Kiev government frequently made such claims during intensive periods in the fighting between Ukrainian government troops and separatists earlier this year that could not be substantiated.

Neither NATO nor the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which is monitoring a cease-fire, could confirm the report. NATO issued a statement in Brussels saying it had noticed increased military activity along the frontier.

“We can confirm a recent increase in Russian troops and equipment along the eastern border of Ukraine,” the statement said. “Russia continues to demonstrate its lack of regard for international agreements and its determination to further destabilize Ukraine.”

The Ukrainian military issued a separate statement saying it had killed up to 200 rebel fighters, and destroyed a variety of military equipment, in the continuing battle over the airport outside Donetsk, which Ukrainian government forces control.

Andrei Purgin, the deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, accused the government forces of starting an “all-out war” against the separatist fighters, according to a report from Russia’s state-controlled RIA Novosti news agency on Thursday.

More than 4,000 people have been killed since the fighting erupted in April, according to United Nations figures.

Tensions escalated in the region after the two separatist city-states, Donetsk and Luhansk, held leadership elections on Sunday.

The government in Kiev, which called the elections illegal, moved to start cutting off the regions physically and financially. It revoked a law that would have given the two regions some autonomy.

Taken together, the various steps made prospects for a peaceful settlement look weaker than they have since a tentative peace plan, including a cease-fire, was signed on Sept. 5.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called a meeting of his security chiefs to discuss the deteriorating situation late Thursday, but no new measures were announced afterward. Mr. Putin has said nothing about the separatist elections.

Russia denies arming the rebels, and the government, while supporting the elections, stopped short of recognizing them, a step that might well prompt further European economic sanctions. Russia is wrestling with a steep drop in oil prices that continues, along with the tension in Ukraine, to push the ruble to record lows against the dollar.

In Moscow, a senior presidential aide, Yuri Ushakov, drew a careful line around the Kremlin’s position on Friday, saying that while it “respected” the outcome of the vote, that did not amount to recognition.

“These are different words,” Mr. Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. “The word ‘respect’ was chosen deliberately.”

Mr. Ushakov said the government still supported the cease-fire agreement and expected negotiations on its further implementation to continue. “But not everything depends on us,” he was quoted as saying. “There are a lot of factors.”

The often ambiguous Russian position has left many analysts to conclude that Moscow seeks to create a “frozen conflict” in eastern Ukraine that would continue to destabilize the entire country, ensuring Moscow’s continued influence and complicating Kiev’s goal of drawing closer to Europe.

Mr. Putin is expected to encounter a variety of European and Asian leaders, and possibly President Obama, on the sidelines of conferences in China and Australia next week. (On Friday, The Advocate, the gay and lesbian newsmagazine based in Los Angeles, named Mr. Putin, who has broadly denounced gay rights, person of the year.)

Among other issues, leaders are expected to discuss the investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in July. Russia has accused Ukraine of shooting down the plane, while Western leaders have said it was most certainly shot down by Ukrainian separatists wielding a Russian surface-to-air missile.

A new attempt to move all the wreckage to the Netherlands, where the flight originated and which is leading the investigation, was suspended on Friday after more human remains were found, according to Donetsk separatists quoted by Russia’s Tass news agency.