A member of the separatists' parliament in Donetsk tells Interfax that they are not planning to attack Kyiv:
One of the leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic on Wednesday denied that the DPR is planning an offensive against Ukrainian military forces but accused the Ukrainian army of using "prohibited types of armaments" and of "unceasing bombardments of peaceful cities."
"The Ukrainian military continues shelling peaceful populated areas in the DPR and all the time tries to provoke us, not to mention that the positions from which this shelling comes are located on our territory. We, for our part, comply with the Minsk agreement and don't take any offensive actions, but we reserve the right to wide-scale defense," Miroslav Rudenko, deputy chairman of the DPR parliament, told Interfax.
He added that the DPR was currently regrouping its forces. "Kyiv has repeatedly said it is planning an offensive operation. We must be ready to rebuff it," he said.
He accused the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe of anti-DPR bias. "For some reason, the OSCE can only see imaginary violations [of the ceasefire] that we commit and watches us redeploy our armaments. At the same time, it doesn't pay any attention to the use of cluster ammunition and other prohibited types of armaments" by the Ukrainian military or to the latter's "unceasing bombardments of peaceful cities," he said.
The Security Council will discuss Ukraine in 4+ hours:
The UN Security Council is due to hold an emergency meeting at 1930 GMT/UTC following reports of a Russian military incursion into Ukraine.
Diplomats say the meeting was requested by the United States after NATO said columns of Russian tanks, artillery and combat troops had entered eastern Ukraine in the past two days.
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said there was "no evidence" behind NATO's claims.