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 Ukraine's military said its warplanes had inflicted heavy losses
on the pro-Russian separatists during air strikes on their
positions, including an armoured convoy which Kiev said had crossed
the border from Russia.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's office said Kiev would
present documentary proof of incursions from Russia to the
international community via diplomats on Monday.
But Russia kept up pressure on Kiev over the death of a Russian man
who, it said, was killed by a Ukrainian shell that hit a residential
area of a Russian border town.
The Ukrainians have denied the shell was theirs. But a Russian
newspaper, citing a source close to the Kremlin, said on Monday that
Moscow was considering the possibility of pinpoint strikes on
Ukraine in retaliation.
The intensified military activity and Moscow's threat of
"irreversible consequences" after the cross-border shelling marks a
sharp escalation in the three-month conflict between Ukrainian
forces representing Kiev's pro-Western leadership and separatists
who have set up 'people's republics' in the east and said they want
to join Russia.
Ukrainian forces, taking the lead from Poroshenko who swore to "find
and destroy" the separatists who killed 23 servicemen in rocket
strikes on Friday, went on the offensive across a broad range of
targets south and south-east of the border town of Luhansk and near
the town itself.
Poroshenko's office on Monday said Ukrainian forces, backed by
warplanes, had broken through rebel lines surrounding Luhansk
airport, ending a separatist blockade.
A spokesman for the so-called Luhansk People's Republic said on
Monday that 30 volunteer fighters had been killed in Ukrainian fire
on Oleksandrivka, a village to the east of the town, Russia's
Interfax news agency said.
PUSHING FOR SANCTIONS
Poroshenko on Sunday complained of alleged Russian incursions into
Ukraine in a telephone call with the European Union's Herman Van
Rompuy with an eye to pushing the 28-member bloc to take further
sanctions against Moscow.
The EU - Ukraine's strategic partner with which it signed a landmark
political and trade agreement last month - targeted a group of
separatist leaders with travel bans and asset freezes on Saturday
but avoided fresh sanctions on Russian business.
 But a Ukrainian presidential aide said Kiev-based diplomats would be
called in on Monday and informed of facts documenting the passage
across the border from Russia of military equipment "used in attacks
on our serving forces".
"We have the facts and the testimony which we will show to the
international community," the aide, Valery Chaly, said, according to
Poroshenko's website.
In Moscow, the newspaper Kommersant quoted a source close to the
Kremlin as saying pinpoint strikes might be carried out in
retaliation for the killing of the Russian man in a border town
which bears the same name as Ukraine's main eastern city of Donetsk.
The source said Russia "knew exactly where fire was coming from." He
said it would not be a massive action but pinpoint strikes on the
positions where the shelling came from.
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Russia sent Ukraine a diplomatic note of protest describing the
incident as "an aggressive act" against Russia and its citizens and
warning of "irreversible consequences". Andriy Lysenko, spokesman
for Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council, denied that
Ukrainian forces had fired onto Russian territory and on residential
areas. The Ukrainian foreign ministry called on Russian authorities
to carry out "an objective and impartial" evaluation of what it
described as "a tragic incident".
Moscow's response to the cross-border shelling raises again the
prospect of Russian intervention, after weeks in which President
Vladimir Putin had appeared intent on disengaging, pulling back tens
of thousands of troops he had massed at the frontier.
The conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in April when armed
pro-Russian fighters seized towns and government buildings, weeks
after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula in response to the
overthrow of a pro-Moscow president in Kiev.
Well over 200 Ukrainian servicemen had been killed in the fighting
and several hundred civilians and rebels.
The fighting has escalated sharply in recent days after Ukrainian
forces pushed the rebels out of their most heavily fortified
bastion, the town of Slaviansk.
Hundreds of rebels, led by a self-proclaimed defence minister from
Moscow, have retreated to the Ukrainian city of Donetsk, built
reinforcements and pledged to make a stand. The once-bustling city
has been emptying in fear of a battle.
Rebel fighters on Monday were evacuating about 200 Donetsk residents
by bus across the Russian border into the Rostov area.
Vladimir, a 55-year-old coal miner, was sending his wife with two
children to relatives across the border. "The Ukrainians have
already cut off water. Electricity is only just working. How can you
live without water and light? I have no work but if on top of that I
have nowhere to live either there is no reason to be here," he said.
(Additional reporting by Natalya Zinets in Kiev; Writing by Richard
Balmforth; Editing by Giles Elgood)
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