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Petro Poroshenko

WASHINGTON and Kiev last night said that Russian troops were actively involved in the fighting tearing apart eastern Ukraine, escalating fears of a direct military confrontation on Europe’s eastern flank.Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko scrapped a trip to Turkey and called an urgent meeting of his security chiefs over what a top official described as a “direct invasion” by Russia.

The latest rapid-fire developments have sent alarm bells ringing in the US and in Europe, where EU leaders are set to discuss the crisis on their doorstep at a weekend summit.

Kiev said Russian soldiers had seized control of a key southeastern border town and a string of towns in an area where fighting had been raging.

US officials accused Russian troops of being behind a lightning counter-offensive that has seen pro-Moscow rebels seize swathes of territory from government ­forces, dramatically turning the tide in the four-month conflict.

“An increasing number of Russian troops are intervening ­directly in fighting on Ukrainian territory,” the US ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt wrote on Twitter. “Russia has also sent its newest air defence systems including the SA-22 into eastern Ukraine and is now directly ­involved in the fighting,” he said.

Nato said at least 1,000 Russian troops were on the ground. “They support separatists, fighting with them and fighting among them,” a Nato official said, adding that the supply of arms by Russia had increased in both “volume and quality”.

But Russia swiftly denied the allegations, saying none of its soldiers were in Ukraine. “There are no Russian soldiers” in eastern Ukraine, said Russia’s ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Andrey Kelin. “There is only one unit of Russian soldiers as they unintentionally crossed the border a couple days ago.”

Kiev called on the West for help after a counter-offensive from the southeast border with Russia ­appeared to smash through an army blockade around the separatist stronghold of Donetsk and threaten the government-held port city of Mariupol. The gains by the separatist fighters come after weeks of government offensives that have seen troops push deep into the last rebel bastions in Ukraine’s industrial heartland.

Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for having “deliberately unleashed a war in Europe” and called for an emergency UN Security Council meeting, a called echoed by Lithuania.

A top rebel leader, Alexander ­Zakharchenko, admitted that Russian troops were fighting alongside his insurgents, but said they were on “holiday” after volunteering to join the battle.

The spiralling tensions come after  Poroshenko and Putin on Tuesday held their first meeting in three months but failed to achieve any concrete breakthrough despite talk of a peace road map.

French President Francois Hollande warned it would be “intolerable and unacceptable” if Russian troops were on the ground after German Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded an explanation from Putin.

The EU said it was “extremely concerned” about the escalating developments on its eastern flank and called on Russia to end its “border hostility”.

The US and EU have already imposed a series of punishing sanctions on Russia over the crisis, the worst standoff between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.

Kiev said Russian troops seized control of the key border town of Novoazovsk and a string of surrounding villages along the southeastern strip of the frontier, where fighting had raged for days.

A volunteer pro-Kiev commander said government troops were surrounded in the key transport hub of Ilovaysk 50km southeast of Donetsk and were quickly running out of ammunition.

The UN says the conflict has  killed more than 2,200 people and forced 400,000 to flee since April. — AFP.