Fighting has rumbled on in east Ukraine between government troops and pro-Russian rebels despite a fresh push for ceasefire talks.
Ukraine's border service said nine guards were wounded when rebels shelled the Dolzhansky border post with Russia, a strategic crossing that Kiev won back days earlier in a step hailed as the "first victory" since the renewal of its military offensive.
Elsewhere, the defence ministry said in a statement on Thursday that its forces had destroyed five trucks carrying "terrorists".
The statement said rebels had launched 16 attacks on government checkpoints in the past 24 hours.
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko this week ripped up a 10-day truce, which Kiev says the insurgents broke more than 100 times at a cost of 30 lives. The military then announced a "massive" anti-rebel operation in the eastern rustbelt.
The latest clashes came as French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to help organise a Contact Group meeting before the weekend to define the conditions for a ceasefire.
They urged him to persuade the pro-Moscow separatists to negotiate.
Russia and Ukraine's foreign ministers agreed in Berlin on Wednesday that talks for a fresh ceasefire should be held this week.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hastily convened a crisis meeting, also involving his French counterpart Laurent Fabius, warning that unless truce talks resumed, the country could face "an explosion of violence".
Ukrainian troops backed by tanks and bomber jets have stepped up the fighting since the end of the ceasefire that failed to stem Europe's deadliest fighting in nearly two decades that has claimed over 450 lives in 11 weeks.
Both Kiev and the separatists refuse to negotiate directly with each other, but the four envoys called for fresh talks by Saturday involving Moscow, a Kiev proxy, the rebels and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Rebels said Thursday they were prepared to take part in indirect talks only if Moscow and international observers were involved.
"If Russia and the OSCE make a proposal to us then we are willing to participate in consultations," Andriy Purgin, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, told AFP.
In a sign that the offensive against the rebels could be set to intensify, Western-backed Poroshenko on Thursday reshuffled his top military leaders, naming a new defence minister and army chief.
"I am sure that Ukraine will win and believe me that there will be a victory parade," Valeriy Geletey, a former police commander, told parliament after his confirmation as minister.
And Washington has voiced strong support for Poroshenko, with a State Department spokeswoman saying "Ukrainian forces have a responsibility to defend their territory and their people" in the face of "aggression by Russian-backed separatists".
NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Wednesday that "Russia's actions threaten the peace and security we have built after the fall of the Berlin Wall".
Share
