KIEV: Ukraine said on Friday it had destroyed part of a Russian armoured column that entered onto its territory in an incursion that has sent cross-border tensions rocketing.
NATO accused Russia of active involvement in the "destabilisation" of eastern Ukraine, where pro-Kremlin separatists have been fighting against Kiev for four months.
The two countries have also been wrangling for days over a Russian convoy that Moscow says is carrying humanitarian aid for besieged rebel-held cities but which Kiev suspects could be a "Trojan horse" to provide military help to the insurgents.
But Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu "guaranteed" his US counterpart Chuck Hagel that there were "no Russian military personnel involved in the humanitarian convoy, nor was the convoy to be used as a pretext to further intervene in Ukraine," the Pentagon said.
Fears that the border clash could spill into all-out war between Kiev and Moscow sent major share markets tumbling across Europe and the United States.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told British Prime Minister David Cameron that government artillery had destroyed a "considerable part" of a small military column that entered the country, the presidency said in a statement.
The European Union demanded that Russia "put an immediate stop to any form of border hostilities, in particular to the flow of arms, military advisers and armed personnel into the conflict region, and to withdraw its forces from the border."
German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced that view in a phone call Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, while French President Francois Hollande called on Russia to respect Ukraine's territorial integrity and for both sides to try to de-escalate the "very high tensions."
Moscow's defence ministry dismissed the alleged military column as a "phantom", its latest denial of Western accusations that it is funnelling weapons to the pro-Russia separatists who launched an insurgency against Kiev in April.
But NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen backed reports of the "Russian incursion" after British media said it had seen the column of some 20 military vehicles cross the border on Thursday.
"It just confirms the fact that we see a continued flow of weapons and fighters from Russia into the eastern Ukraine," he said.
"It is a clear demonstration of continued Russian involvement in the destabilisation of eastern Ukraine."
As the fallout snowballed, Ukraine's foreign minister announced he will meet his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Berlin on Sunday
Comments
Comments are closed.