Amid signs of sharpening fighting in Ukraine's east, Kiev said Moscow Monday sent a column of tanks and armored vehicles into its territory near the site of a rebel offensive. Ukraine's military said it attacked the column and blocked its advance, but Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko expressed "extreme concern" about the armored column and Russia's plans for a new convoy in a phone conversation with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, his office said.
Russia's foreign minister said he knew nothing about the column and called reports of support for rebels inside Ukraine "disinformation."
Separately, Mr. Poroshenko dissolved Ukraine's Parliament and announced new elections for Oct. 26. The move was expected after the country's ruling coalition crumbled in July. Western parties, including Mr. Poroshenko's, are widely expected to win the new vote by a wide margin. Parliamentarian who are currently in office will continue performing their duties until the new Parliament is elected, Mr. Poroshenko said.
More than 2,000 people have died in fighting between government troops and pro-Russia rebels in Ukraine since April, according to the United Nations. While Kiev has captured most of the rebels' self-declared republics in eastern Ukraine, it has lately run into headwinds.
After surrounding the provincial capitals of Donetsk and Luhansk, officials in Kiev said Monday that Ukrainian troops were now fighting off counterattacks. On Ukraine's southern coast, rebels said they were pushing their way out of Donetsk toward Mariupol, a port city taken from rebels in mid-June in the first big victory by Ukrainian government troops.
Andrei Purgin, the first deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed separatist Donetsk People's Republic, wrote on an official rebel website that after a month of attempting to take Donetsk, Ukraine's army had "lost its steam." "We are planning to reach Mariupol as part of our counteroffensive," he wrote.
Russia has defended the legality of a convoy of more than 200 trucks that entered Ukraine last week, though it was denounced by the European Union and the U.S.
At a briefing in Moscow Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia was still hoping for a political resolution of the conflict and noted that the aid from the last convoy was being distributed inside rebel-held territories without incident. Mr. Lavrov said that a second convoy would deliver aid to the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk by following the same route as the first one and should arrive there faster than the first. "We would like to agree on all the conditions of aid delivery by the second convoy via the same route, in the same parameters, with participation of Ukrainian border police as soon as possible," he said. The last convoy spent weeks waiting for permission from the Ukrainian authorities. In the end, it crossed into Ukraine on Friday without permission from Kiev.
Mr. Lavrov said that Moscow had officially proposed new aid trucks to Kiev, but that Ukraine hadn't officially responded. Kiev believes Moscow's humanitarian assistance and calls for a cease-fire is a ploy to give separatists time to regroup and strike back with new force.
In Kiev the government expressed outrage at a rebel parade over the weekend, in which separatists marched captured Ukrainian soldiers along with their damaged military equipment through the center of rebel-held Donetsk, where crowds shouted at them and pelted them with eggs. Human-rights activists denounced the parade as a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit degrading and humiliating prisoners of war.
Mr. Lavrov said however that he "did not see anything resembling abuse" of Ukrainian troops at the parade.
Alexander Kolyandr and Nonna Fomenko contributed to this article.
Write to Olga Razumovskaya at olga.razumovskaya@wsj.com
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(END) Dow Jones Newswires
August 25, 2014 09:40 ET (13:40 GMT)
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