KIEV, Ukraine -- Fighting in eastern Ukraine left at least nine soldiers dead Friday as government troops pressed their offensive against pro-Russia insurgents using heavy artillery and combat jets, and prospects of a truce appeared dim.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine was ready to conduct another round of talks with representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the rebels today, but didn't name their venue. Two previous rounds of negotiations during a 10-day cease-fire yielded no visible progress.
Moscow strongly pushed for extending the truce and holding more talks. The continuing fighting is putting more pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been facing increasingly angry nationalist demands to send troops to help the insurgency -- a move that likely would trigger more Western sanctions.
Ukraine's National Security Council chief Andriy Parubiy said Friday that Russia was massing troops near the Ukrainian border and claimed it let insurgents attack the Ukrainian border posts from its side. The statements could not be independently verified.
The two neighbors, who share a 1,250-mile border that is unmarked and unguarded outside of a few checkpoints, have been trading claims and counterclaims ever since Ukraine began fighting pro-Russia separatists in April.
The government said nine troops were killed and 13 others were wounded in Friday's fighting in the east, according to the Interfax news agency. It did not elaborate on where or how the deaths occurred.
Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, the head of Ukraine's security service, said Friday that over the past four days, 20 Russian tanks or armored vehicles had illegally crossed the border to take part in the insurgency. Russia has denied accusations that it is arming and supporting the separatists.
For its part, Moscow has repeatedly accused Ukrainian troops of firing shells that landed on the Russian side and on one occasion last month hit a Russian border post, wounding one customs officer. Russian border guards said 10 artillery shells flew from the Ukrainian side Friday, but no one was injured.
It is nearly impossible to prove or dispel the claims from the opposing sides because the fighting consists of intermittent clashes between small units with no fixed front line, and it is dangerous for journalists and other observers to travel around. Five journalists have been killed covering the conflict, and several teams of observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have been kidnapped by rebels.
Russia has proposed hosting observers from the organization and Ukrainian officers at its border checkpoints to prove it isn't fueling the mutiny.
The Russian Foreign Ministry on Friday accused Poroshenko's government of dragging its feet on holding another round of negotiations to resume a truce and accused it of using cluster munitions against civilians.
Parubiy said government forces were attacking rebel positions in eastern Ukraine with artillery and planes and that 17 villages had been recaptured since the cease-fire expired Monday. He said Ukrainian forces were in control of 23 of the 36 local regions within the Donetsk and Luhansk provinces that have declared independence.
Andrei Purgin of the separatist Donetsk People's Republic dismissed the government's report.
"Maybe they occupied 17 villages of some sort, but there wasn't a single militia fighter there," he said.
Insurgents in Luhansk said Friday that they have killed 125 Ukrainian troops, destroyed nine armored vehicles and downed three combat aircraft since Wednesday.
Both sides' claims of enemy losses have been exaggerated in the past, however.
Friday's fighting centered on the outskirts of Slovyansk, a city in the Donetsk region that has been a key flash point in the fighting. The military reported to Poroshenko that it flushed the insurgents out of Mykolaivka on the outskirts of Slovyansk, capturing 50 of them.
Rebels also shelled the Donetsk airport overnight.
The mutiny in eastern Ukraine, which began in mid-April after the ouster of the nation's pro-Moscow president and the subsequent Russian annexation of Crimea, has killed more than 400 people, according to the United Nations.
The crisis in Ukraine has strained ties between Russia and the West to a degree unseen since the Cold War, prompting NATO to consider long-term responses to Moscow's apparent new willingness to flex its military might.
To that end, NATO and Russia both launched naval exercises Friday in the Black Sea.
NATO's drills in the western part of the Black Sea just a few hundred miles from Ukraine's coast involve ships from the U.S., Bulgaria, Greece, Romania and Turkey. They were to continue until July 13.
Russia's Black Sea Fleet fielded about 20 ships and more than 20 aircraft for its maneuvers, which included missile launches at practice targets.
Information for this article was contributed by Balint Szlanko and Vladimir Isachenkov of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/05/2014