KIEV - Pro-Russian separatists renewed attacks on Ukrainian forces at an airport complex in the east on Monday after Kiev launched a mass operation to reclaim lost ground there that Russia called a "strategic mistake."
Ukrainian officials said three soldiers had been killed and 66 wounded over the past 24 hours, during which they said they had returned battle lines at the airport to the status quo under a much violated international peace plan.
Russia expressed concern at what it called escalation by Kiev and published its own peace plan on Monday in the form of a letter from President Vladimir Putin to Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, which it said Poroshenko had rejected.
"It's the biggest, even strategic mistake of the Ukrainian authorities to bank on a military solution to the crisis," Interfax quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin as saying. "This may lead to irreversible consequences for Ukrainian statehood."
Ukrainian officials have insisted Moscow sticks to the 12-point peace plan agreed in Minsk in September, which they say was not violated by its airport counter-offensive, launched after troops had appeared to be pinned down inside the complex.
A military source told Reuters that up to 25 Russian tanks had crossed the border near Luhansk.
Since plans for another round of peace talks last week were abandoned, fighting has flared up again in Ukraine, whose Crimean peninsula was annexed by Russia in March last year, prompting a crisis with the West, which has imposed sanctions.
Despite what Kiev and the West says is incontrovertible proof, Russia denies its troops are involved or that it is funneling military equipment to the separatists.
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- Reuters