The FT writes:
There are no active Russian servicemen in Ukraine – or so the Kremlin has been insisting for months.
Yet a recent encounter in the only functioning restaurant in war-torn Lugansk belied that claim. As the sounds of Celine Dion wafted from the sound system of the Weeping Willow café on a recent evening, half a dozen Russian soldiers sat down to a vodka-soaked dinner.
The men, dressed in the latest Russian army uniform, fanned out across two tables...
...Asked if he and the others had come as volunteers, he replied sarcastically: “Sure, we’re volunteers. Nobody sent us here.” He continued on a more serious note. “They gave us an order: who wants to go volunteer? And we put our hands up like this,” he said, mocking someone being forced to put their hand up. ...
...Western governments believe Russian troops and heavy weaponry were instrumental in reversing a campaign by Ukrainian troops to pacify two eastern provinces over-run by pro-Moscow separatists. The provinces, Lugansk and Donetsk, are now under rebel control as a result of that tenuous ceasefire.
Moscow insists that any Russian citizens fighting on the side of the separatists are “volunteers” and that any soldiers who have mysteriously ended up on Ukrainian territory had gone there on their holidays, while taking a sabbatical from their military service.
But evidence on the ground has suggested otherwise. In early September Nato alleged that 3,000 active Russian soldiers were on the ground in east Ukraine, while Kiev put the figure at as high as 10,000.
In September, a commission on military affairs on Russia’s presidential human rights council alleged that 100 soldiers from the 18th Motorised Rifle Brigade of military unit 27777 had died in action in east Ukraine, according to a report by Reuters."