State TV says Anatoly Travkin didn't tell his wife or commanders he was heading to Ukraine to fight with pro-Russia rebels

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Russian state television has for the first time shown the funeral of a soldier killed fighting in east Ukraine, but said the serviceman died on the frontline while on leave.

State-controlled TV station Channel One showed the burial of paratrooper Anatoly Travkin in the central Russian city of Kostroma in its news broadcast on Thursday evening, with soldiers in uniform firing a salute.

The broadcaster said Travkin, 28, had not told his newlywed wife or his commanders about his decision to head to Ukraine to fight alongside pro-Russia rebels battling government forces. "Officially he just went on leave," the news reader said.

Kiev and the west have accused Russia of sending regular army troops across the border to head a counter-offensive by insurgents that has seen them capture swathes of territory.

Moscow has repeatedly denied the claims, saying troops have been sent on routine drills close to the border with Ukraine.

A top group representing soldiers' relatives has said thousands of servicemen have been sent into Ukraine, amid reports of secret funerals being held in Russia.

The Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, the main rights organisation representing the military, has said that up to 15,000 soldiers could have been sent into Ukraine over the past two months and compiled lists of missing soldiers.

In a first official reaction to a request for information from the rights group, Russia's defence ministry told the Interfax news agency on Friday that it had put eight soldiers in contact with their families to prove they were conducting training exercises inside Russia.

The Kremlin's reluctance to admit its troops are in Ukraine has drawn comparisons to the initial Soviet reluctance to acknowledge Moscow went to war in Afghanistan in 1979.

Moscow confirmed last month that some of its soldiers – from the same city as Travkin – had been captured on Ukrainian territory but said they had strayed across the border accidentally.

A senior separatist leader has also admitted that serving Russian soldiers are fighting alongside insurgents in eastern Ukraine but said they were spending their holidays battling in the war-hit region "rather than at the beach".