Kiev says Moscow has 7,500 troops in east Ukraine

~"The presence of 7,500 representatives of Russian armed forces in Ukraine destabilizes the situation and prevents us from stabilizing it," Poltorak said in a statement on Saturday.

Russia has repeatedly denied that its troops have entered Ukrainian territory.

Poltorak added that Kiev plans to increase the strength of the armed forces by providing them with arms and equipment "in the nearest time."

The statement comes a day after Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, accused Russia of shelling Ukrainian territory from across the border.

“Over the past day, for the first time since the signing of the Minsk agreement, the shooting of Ukrainian territory restarted from the side of the Russian Federation,” Lysenko claimed, referring to an truce agreement signed in the Belarusian capital earlier in September.

Meanwhile, security officials in Kiev said on Saturday that four Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and ten others wounded in clashes with Pro-Russians in the east of the country during the past 24 hours.

The two mainly Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk in eastern Ukraine have been the scene of deadly clashes between pro-Russians and the Ukrainian army since Kiev launched a military operation in mid-April in a bid to crush their protests.

On September 5, a truce agreement was inked by the representatives of Ukraine, Russia, and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, in an effort to put an end to the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The shaky two-month truce between Kiev and pro-Russians has been violated almost daily, with both sides continuing to blame each other.

Source: PressTV