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Top diplomats to meet after Ukraine says it destroyed Russian convoy

Top Russian and Ukrainian diplomats have agreed to meet with their French and German counterparts in Berlin on Sunday in an urgent attempt to lower tensions after Kiev claimed to destroy Russian military convoys encroaching on its territory.

Ukrainian soldier in Donetsk guards border with Russia on August, 15, 2014.
Ukrainian soldier in Donetsk guards border with Russia on August, 15, 2014. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
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The rush of diplomacy came after Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko told UK prime minister David Cameron by phone that armed forces had blown up part of a fortified convey – different from the humanitarian conveys – that reporters with the UK’s Guardian newspaper saw travelling through a gap in a border fence on Thursday night.

Ukraine had long claimed that Russia had been funnelling a stream of arms to pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine, but said media reports marked the first time Western reporters had witnesses such an alleged move.

The US National Security Council also accused Russia late Friday of an “escalation” in the crisis after an alleged incursion and has urged Moscow to stop further “extremely dangerous and provocative” attempts to cause further destabilisation in Ukraine.

The Kremlin denied on Friday that the convoys had strayed across the border and a Russian defence ministry spokesman said no Russian vehicle had been destroyed because none had breached the border, however, no proof was provided.

"Even as we work to gather information, we reiterate our concern about repeated Russian and Russian-supported incursions into Ukraine," National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said.

"Russia has no right to send vehicles, persons, or cargo of any kind into Ukraine, under any pretext, without the government of Ukraine's permission,” she continued.

Meanwhile, some 300 trucks continue to languish around 30 kilometres from the border with Ukraine’s Lugansk region as Kiev and Moscow continue to wrangle over how it would cross into rebel-held territory.

Moscow says the trucks contain humanitarian aid for eastern Ukraine but the West and Kiev worry it could be a façade for getting arms – and even soldiers – across the border.

The four-way meeting schedule for Sunday was agreed between Russia’s chief-of-staff in the Kremlin, Sergei Ivanov, and his Ukrainian counterpart Boris Lozhkin, who met in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Germany’s foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Bild newspaper on Saturday that he hoped the meeting would put an end to the violence in eastern Ukraine and pave the way to “urgent and necessary aid”.

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