Russian tanks and troops fired their way into eastern Ukraine on Thursday and seized a strategic gateway town on the road to the heavily militarized Crimean peninsula in a brazen display of support for pro-Russia separatists fighting Ukrainian government troops. Defense officials in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, said two armored Russian columns burst across the border into southern Ukraine at midday and rolled over the town of Novoazovsk on the Sea of Azov, opening a new front in the 5-month-old separatist battle.
The government’s account was bolstered by satellite photos released by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization showing convoys of tanks and armored vehicles entering Ukraine from Russia's Rostov region over the last two weeks. Also exposing Russia’s hand in the Ukraine crisis, a key separatist leader said in an interview with Russian state television that at least 3,000 Russian citizens, most of them military veterans or active-duty soldiers on leave, have been fighting in Ukraine on the side of the insurgents. “They are fighting with us, understanding that it is their duty,” Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic, told Russian state television in an interview aired Thursday.
The evidence of Russian troops and hardware on the territory of sovereign Ukraine undermined Russian President Vladimir Putin’s steadfast denials that Russia has been arming and instigating the anti-Kiev uprising, which has taken more than 2,000 lives since April. President Obama deemed the Russian military intrusion into Ukraine proof, “if there was ever any doubt, that Russia is responsible for the violence in Ukraine.” “This is not a homegrown, indigenous uprising in eastern Ukraine,” Obama told a White House news briefing. “The separatists are backed, trained, armed, financed by Russia.”
He said Russia was now “more isolated than at any time since the Cold War” and that the latest provocation would lead to a toughening of sanctions, which have already spooked investors who are pulling billions out of the Russian economy. French President Francois Hollande said the presence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine was unacceptable. “If the escalation continues, European Union sanctions will remain and could even be strengthened,” he warned.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-ukraine-russia-invasion-20140828-story.html
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