Sources in Moscow have admitted that a number of men captured inside Ukraine were indeed serving Russian soldiers, but said they crossed the border by mistake. The admission comes as President Vladimir Putin meets his Ukrainian counterpart, Petro Poroshenko, for talks in Minsk. The pair shook hands ahead of the talks on Tuesday afternoon.
Videos were released by Ukrainian authorities of interrogations of the prisoners, who said they were serving Russian army officers. One said he had not been told exactly where they were going, but had an idea he was inside Ukraine. There was no immediate confirmation of the authenticity of the recordings, but the fact that Russian wire agencies ran a defence ministry admission that soldiers had indeed crossed into Ukraine suggested that the footage was genuine.
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