Kiev

NATO would fully respect any potential decision by Ukraine to seek membership of the Western military alliance, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has said.

President Vladimir Putin insisted Aug. 29 that Kiev must enter substantial talks with pro-Russian rebels amid a dramatic escalation of the fighting in Ukraine.

"It is necessary to make the Ukrainian authorities start substantial talks," he told youths at a pro-Kremlin summer camp in central Russia.

Surrounded Ukrainian troops to be allowed to leave

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has called on pro-Russian forces in Ukraine to provide a humanitarian corridor for the Ukrainian soldiers they have surrounded.

Leaders of the self-proclaimed People's Republic of Donetsk accepted this initiative - provided that the troops first disarm.

Ukraine has actually become a battlefield between West and East, with Occidentals trying to avoid war, while Russia wants it, and Ukraine is fighting it. Meanwhile, the West keeps ignoring the reality, a Friday's release of the Ukraine embassy in Bucharest asserts.

The United States accused Russia Aug. 28 of being directly involved in the Ukraine conflict after pro-Kremlin rebels seized swathes of territory from government forces in a new southeastern front.
      
"An increasing number of Russian troops are intervening directly in fighting on Ukrainian territory," the US ambassador to Kyiv Geoffrey Pyatt wrote on Twitter.
      

Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Titus Corlatean told the Annual Meeting of the Romanian Diplomacy on Wednesday that the potential generated by the current situation in Ukraine may also be used to readjust the relations between Kiev and Bucharest and pronounced for a climate of 'trust and friendship' between the two states.

Russia's foreign minister said Wednesday that Moscow was not interested in breaking up Ukraine despite respecting declarations of independence by the two main eastern regions.
      

Agreement on new shipment of humanitarian aid

MINSK -- Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that Moscow should send humanitatrian aid to Ukraine.

According to reports, this will happen under the auspices of the ICRC and in cooperation with Kiev.

A meeting between the presidents of Ukraine and Russia has failed to yield an agreement to stop the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

Talks between Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko and his Russian counterpart  Vladimir Putin in Belarus’ capital of Minsk on Tuesday included a one-to-one session that stretched late into the night.

Russian soldiers crossed border "by mistake"

MOSCOW -- Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine crossed the border by mistake, said a source in the Russian Ministry of Defense, Reuters and RIA Novosti are reporting.