Ukraine President Claims Russia Invaded Ukraine, and Ukraine Destroyed Russian Military Convoy

Here's the unbelievable claim of the day: Ukraine Attacks Russian Military Convoy, Says President.

Moscow’s stand-off with Kiev intensified dramatically on Friday night after the Ukrainian government said it had blown up a Russian military convoy inside its territory, news that sparked a flurry of diplomatic activity to try to defuse the deepening crisis.

Just hours after a Russian humanitarian aid convoy of 270 white military trucks, some of which were empty, pulled up in the town of Kamensk-Shakhtinsky near Ukraine's border, Kiev said it had launched an artillery strike against a separate column of some two-dozen Russian military vehicles that had crossed into its territory under the cover of darkness.

In a phone call with British prime minister David Cameron on Thursday evening, details of which emerged on Friday, Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko confirmed a Russian military convoy had entered Ukraine but said most of it had been “eliminated” in an artillery strike.

Russia on Friday night denied Ukraine’s claim that it had “destroyed” part of a Russian military convoy on Ukrainian territory. The convoy that allegedly crossed the border into Ukraine did not exist, and such statements based on fantasy and assumptions should not be seriously discussed, the defence ministry said in a statement carried by state media.

The Russian foreign ministry accused Ukraine of threatening to use force against its humanitarian aid mission and of sharply stepping up hostilities “with the apparent aim of cutting off the path the convoy should take from the border to Lugansk under the agreement with Kiev.”