Maxim Zmeyev/REUTERS
In fact Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the US Army's top commander in Europe, says that Russian support for separatists has "doubled" since reached a tentative ceasefire.
"When you look at the amount of Russian equipment that the proxies were using prior to the Minsk agreements, that amount has doubled beginning in December into the hundreds," Hodges told reporters on his first visit to Ukraine.
Russian support for the separatists include artillery, surveillance drones, and armored vehicles that would otherwise be next to impossible for a rebel group to obtain.
"Those are not the types of things you would find in a militia. They clearly are coming from a modern military force coming from Russia," Hodges said.
In November, the Armament Research Services has released their third report on the arms and munitions being used by both the Ukrainian government and the rebels in the ongoing conflict. Complete with photographic evidence, it is clear that Moscow has been covertly supplying an assortment of older Soviet weaponry along with recently introduced Russian equipment to the separatists.