US Warns Russia: Further Intervention In Ukraine Will Be Seen As 'Invasion'

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United States warned Russia on Friday that any further intervention in Ukraine, including under the pretense of delivering humanitarian aid, would be viewed as "an invasion of Ukraine."

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power delivered the warning at a Security Council meeting focusing on the human rights situation in Ukraine's east, where government forces are fighting pro-Russian separatists. Recent reports by the West and the Kiev government have accused Moscow of dispatching what NATO estimates is 20,000 troops to the border.

Ukraine crisis: Nato images 'show Russia troops'

Nato has released satellite images it says show Russian armed forces inside Ukrainian territory to help rebels fight government forces.

Ukraine's president held a security council meeting on Thursday over the "sharp aggravation of the situation". Russia has denied the claims.

Earlier, rebels opened a new front in the south by seizing the coastal town of Novoazovsk.

At least 2,119 people have been killed in four months of fighting.

Amid condemnation from Western powers, the United Nations Security Council has held an emergency meeting in New York to discuss the crisis.

"Russia has to stop lying and stop fuelling this conflict," the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, told the council.

Britain's ambassador Sir Mark Lyall Grant said Russia was guilty of "a clear violation of sovereign Ukrainian territory", adding that the conflict would "no longer exist" without Russia's direct support for separatists.

Meanwhile Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said the crisis was a "direct consequence of the reckless policy of Kiev, which is conducting a war against its own people".

comment: Russia has invaded the Ukraine

Kiev, Ukraine (CNN) -- A top Ukrainian army officer said a "full-scale invasion" of his country was under way Thursday, as a U.S. official said up to 1,000 Russian troops had crossed Ukraine's southern border to fight alongside pro-Russian rebels.

U.S. officials said Russian troops were directly involved in the latest fighting, despite Moscow's denials.

Russian Combat Forces Inside the Territory of Ukraine

Rebels backed by Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers fought Ukrainian forces on two fronts Thursday: southeast of rebel-held Donetsk, and along the nation's southern coast in the town of Novoazovsk, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the Russian border, said Mykhailo Lysenko, the deputy commander of the Ukrainian Donbas battalion.

"This is a full-scale invasion," Lysenko said, referring to the fighting in the south.

ntelligence now indicates that up to 1,000 Russian troops have moved into southern Ukraine with heavy weapons and are fighting there, a U.S. official told CNN on Thursday.

NATO provided what it said is evidence: satellite images showing Russian troops engaged in military operations inside Ukraine.

"The images, captured in late August, depict Russian self-propelled artillery units moving in a convoy through the Ukrainian countryside and then preparing for action by establishing firing positions in the area of Krasnodon, Ukraine," NATO said in a news release.

See the NATO satellite images

Commercial satellite imagery shows the same, according to a British security source with detailed knowledge of UK intelligence estimates. One image that British intelligence has analyzed, dated Tuesday, shows 15 heavy trucks, at least seven armored vehicles and at least nine artillery positions.

Russia's military actions in eastern Ukraine "must cease immediately," British Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday.

"I'm extremely concerned by mounting evidence that Russian troops have made large-scale incursions into South Eastern Ukraine, completely disregarding the sovereignty of a neighbor," Cameron said. "The international community has already warned Russia that such provocative actions would be completely unacceptable and illegal."

Medclinician

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian military forces have been spotted in both major rebel-held cities in eastern Ukraine, an official said Tuesday, prompting Ukraine to declare it now has to fight the Russian army, not just the separatists.

The statement on the Russians by Col. Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Ukraine's National Security Council, came after the country's defense minister said Ukraine's armed forces are expanding their strategy from just fighting separatists to facing the Russian army in a war that could cost "tens of thousands" of lives.

Lysenko told reporters Russian troops had been seen in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as other locations throughout the east. The claim could not be confirmed independently. Lysenko also said 15 servicemen had been killed over the previous day.

In Moscow, a Kremlin aide sharply criticized EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso for breaching confidentiality when he quoted Russian President Vladimir Putin as saying that Moscow could take over Kiev in two weeks if it wished.

Yuri Ushakov, the Russian leader's foreign policy adviser, told reporters that Putin's statement was "taken out of context and carried a completely different meaning."

Ushakov lashed out at Barroso, saying it was a breach of diplomatic practices and "unworthy of a serious politician" to speak publicly about a private conversation.

Putin's comment reportedly came in response to Barroso pointing out Ukrainian and Western claims that Russia had sharply escalated the conflict in eastern Ukraine by sending regular army units into Ukraine. NATO has estimated that at least 1,000 Russian soldiers have entered Ukraine, helping turn the tide in the last week in favor of the pro-Russian insurgents. NATO also says 20,000 Russian soldiers have been positioned along the Ukraine-Russian border.

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"It has only been in the last few days that an exceptional article in Foreign Affairs, by the exceptional scholar of geopolitics, John Mearsheimer, is beginning to register. Mearsheimer lays most of the responsibility for the Ukraine crisis where it belongs: Washington and its European allies. “U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy."

"The story of the downed plane with 298 dead people is no longer news, and the investigation as to who shot it down? Don’t hold your breath. Last week Dutch viewers of a TV news program were informed about something that had been doing the rounds on internet samizdat: the countries participating in the MH17 investigation have signed a nondisclosure agreement. Any of the participants (which include Kiev) has the right to veto publication of the results without explanation. The truth about the cause of the horrifying fate of the 298 appears to have been already settled by propaganda. That means that although there has been no shred of evidence that the official story of the ‘rebels’ shooting down the plane with Russian involvement, it remains a justification for sanctions against Russia."