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As Kyiv and Moscow vied to send convoys of trucks carrying humanitarian aid to eastern Ukraine, western journalists confirmed for the first time Russian army vehicles and personnel are moving across the border.

A column of vehicles, including armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and soft-skinned trucks, drove into Ukraine at an obscure border crossing near the Russian town of Donetsk shortly before 10 p.m., The Daily Telegraph reported.

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Kyiv, NATO and Western governments have long accused Russia of filtering arms and men across the border to fuel the separatist insurgency in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, but such an incident has never before been witnessed by Western journalists.

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Earlier, a separate, larger convoy of about 270 Russian trucks, which Moscow claims is carrying aid, rumbled to a halt just short of the border, while in east Ukraine, shells hit the centre of the rebel-held city of Donetsk for the first time. Russia has proposed a ceasefire for humanitarian aid deliveries to war-torn parts of southeastern Ukraine.