Ukrainian Sergeant: 'This Is Now A War With Russia'

Ukraine and Western officials on Wednesday warned that Russian forces are opening up another, major front in the war, according to The New York Times.

"This is what happened: they crossed the border, took up positions and started shooting," Sgt. Aleksei Panko after telling the Times that about 60 armored vehicles crossed the border near the town of Novoazovsk. "This is now a war with Russia."

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday that Russia's "incursions" in Ukraine "likely indicates a Russian-directed counter-offensive" in Luhansk and Donetsk. She accused Russia of "sending young men into Ukraine, not telling them or their parents where they are going."

"These are not steps you take when you are operating in a transparent manner," Psaki said. "We are concerned about the Russian government's unwillingness to tell the truth even as its soldiers are found 30 miles inside Ukraine."

U.S. officials added that there is proof Russia has provided advanced air defenses not known to be in the Ukrainian arsenal (and thus could not be "looted" by separatists) and routinely flies drones over head to gather intelligence for the separatists.

Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, wrote on Twitter Tuesday that Russia's recent moves in Ukraine "may indicate that a Russian counteroffensive is underway" in southeastern Ukraine, where fighting between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists has raged for months.

"The Russian military's use of artillery from locations within Ukraine is of special concern to Western military officials, who say Russian artillery has already been used to shell Ukrainian forces near Luhansk," Andrew Kramer and Michael Gordon of The Time report. "And along with the antiaircraft systems operated by separatists or Russian forces inside Ukraine, the artillery has the potential to alter the balance of power in the struggle for control of eastern Ukraine."

An administration official told the Times that they believe" that self-propelled artillery is operated by Russians rather than separatists since no separatist training on this artillery has occurred to date."

Mini Invasions

Twice in the past three days, Ukraine has accused Russian soldiers of crossing the border and fighting alongside pro-Russian rebels in southeastern Ukraine. Ukraine's state security service said Monday it detained 10 Russian paratroopers who crossed into Ukrainian territory.

On Tuesday, dozens of heavily-armed strangers with Russian accents and military gear without insignias appeared in an eastern Ukrainian village and set up a road block.

"The people at the new checkpoint, they were polite military men wearing green. Definitely not Ukrainian. They're definitely not from around here," one man told Reuters.

The "green men" are a reminder of the Russian special forces that were used to annex the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.

About a month after Russia annexed the strategic peninsula, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged he had sent in Russian forces to protect Russian-speaking citizens in Crimea.

"Of course we had our servicemen behind the self-defense units of Crimea," Putin said during an annual televised call-in with the nation in April. "We had to make sure what is happening now in eastern Ukraine didn't happen there."

The officials told the Times that Russia has provided support for separatists in the region of Luhansk, where government forces recently had success in routing pro-Russian rebels. And they are also aiding a separatist push in the south toward the town of Mariupol, a major port on the Azov Sea.

According to the report, Western officials believe the Russian military has fired artillery from within Ukraine. They said it has already been fired to shell Ukrainian forces in Luhansk.

"Russia is clearly trying to put its finger on the scale to tip things back in favor of its proxies," a senior American official told the Times. "Artillery barrages and other Russian military actions have taken their toll on the Ukrainian military."

The Times notes that Putin, who is in Belarus for trades with Ukraine and European leaders, may be "calculating that Moscow could intervene in eastern Ukraine with conventional Russian forces without risking further Western economic sanctions."