Sky News has filmed well-armed, well-equipped troops, who appear to be wearing recent issue Russian combat gear, operating alongside separatist forces in south-eastern Ukraine.
The men were travelling in a small convoy, which included an armoured personnel carrier and two machine gunners mounted on pick-up trucks.
The vehicles were marked with the white painted circles that signal allegiance to the separatists, but all other insignia and number plates had been removed.
“We saw them being waved through a rebel-controlled checkpoint outside the town of Novoazovsk as one of the guards said: ‘These are ours!’,” journalist Katie Stallard reports.
Being on a visit to Tallinn, Estonia, U.S. President Obama on Wednesday called the conflict in Ukraine a ‘moment of testing’ for the United States and Europe, and condemned Russia’s intervention as a ‘brazen assault’ on the nation’s territorial integrity that warrants a unified response.
“It was not the government in Kyiv that destabilized eastern Ukraine; it’s been the pro-Russian separatists who are encouraged by Russia, financed by Russia, trained by Russia, supplied by Russia and armed by Russia,” he said. “These are the facts. They are provable. They are not subject to dispute,” he stressed.
www.belsat.eu/en, following Sky News
