Ukrainian foreign affairs minister says 4K Russian troops in Donbas

Ukrainian foreign minister Pavel Klimkin testified in Washington Tuesday that the Ukrainian government has proof the Russian military has been supplying the separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk with heavy military equipment, munitions and as many as 4,200 troops, according to Russian language news accounts.

According to a news report in lb.ua, Klimkin gave his remarks to a subcommittee on State Department funding.

According to Klimkin, 400 Russian tanks, 800 armored vehicles and 200 rocket artillery launchers are part of the inventories of the two rebel republics.

It is generally known in Russian media that 40,000 rebel troops are under arms in the Donetsk republic, so the 4,200 Russian regulars represent about 10 percent of the total, and most of those probably rear echelon troops there to oversee maintenance and repair of the Russian equipment.

In a separate report in korrespondent.net,  the Ukrainian internal security agency, the SBU provided data to investigators at The Hague that many of the shells used by rebel troops in Lugansk and Donetsk are Russian manufactured.  In the early going, rebel media tried to put forward the idea that all the heavy equipment such as tanks and infantry fighting vehicles were battlefield salvage, and not shipped across the Russian border.  The same applied to heavy ammunition such as mortar shells, and artillery and rocket shells.

In the meantime, artillery fire from both sides continued.

According to a report in lb.ua, rebel mortar fire his locations near Donetsk city, including at Severnoye,  Avdievka,  Zaitsevo and Verkhnetoretskye.

In the south near Mariupol rebel artillery hit Ukrainian positions at Talakovka and Taramchuk.  Rebel mortar fire was reported at Vodyanoye, Marinka and Talakovka.

In Lugansk, rebel artillery fire was recorded at Krimenskoye, while rebel mortar fire struck Ukrainian positions at Novotoshkovskoye and Krimenskoye.

The Ukrainian ministry of defense said that four Ukrainian soldiers were wounded in the artillery shelling.

On the night of March 6th to March 7th, Ukrainian artillery hit several locations in Donetsk. The locations hit included  Trudovskoye,  Aleksandrovka, Luganskoye, Yelenovka, Zaitsevo, Gorlovka Spartak and Yasinovataya.

Near Mariupol, Ukrainian artillery struck rebel positions at Sahanka, Kominternovo, Leninskoye Oktyabrskoye and Novoazovskoye.

Rebel media claimed that Ukrainians fired on their troops almost 4,000 times over the previous 24 hours, including small arms fire.