KIEV: European mediators in the Ukrainian crisis said on Thursday that two men captured by Kiev’s troops had confessed to being members of the Russian armed forces sent in to back up pro-Moscow separatist fighters.

The revelation by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) provides some of the strongest independent evidence to date of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in the 13-month war in the neighbouring nation.

Kiev and its Western allies have long accused the Kremlin of covertly coordinating the loosely organised rebel units’ tactics and backing them up with high-tech weapons and troops in their fight against Ukraine’s pro-Western government.

Russia denies the allegations and says the claims are part of a US-led campaign to topple Putin and contain Russia’s regional interests.

The OSCE said the two wounded servicemen said in an interview conducted at Kiev’s military hospital that they were armed when wounded and taken prisoner by Ukrainian government forces in the separatist eastern province of Lugansk on Saturday.

“Both individuals claimed that they were members of a unit of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. They claimed that they were on a reconnaissance mission. They were armed but had no orders to attack,” the security body said in a report.

“One of them said he had received orders from his military unit to go to Ukraine; he was to ‘rotate’ after three months. Both of them said they had been to Ukraine ‘on missions’ before,” the OSCE added.

There was no initial response to the findings from either the Kremlin or Russia’s foreign ministry.

But initial state media coverage of the findings suggest that Moscow may try to either downplay or ignore the report.

Russia’s TASS news agency misquoted the OSCE as saying that both Russians “claimed that they used to serve in a unit of the Russian Armed Forces”. Ukraine has charged the captured men — identified as Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sergeant Aleksander Aleksandrov — with involvement in “terrorist activity” and promised to release them should they fully confess during a public trial.

Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2015

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