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 Moscow, which has acknowledged in the past that Russian national
"volunteers" might be fighting for the separatists, repeated its
denial that any regular Russian troops were involved in the campaign
which has cost over 6,100 lives.
The wounded soldier, who identified himself as a sergeant in the
'spetsnaz' from the central Russian city of Togliatti, said he was
part of a 14-member group operating near the big border town of
Luhansk.
The video could not be independently verified but if the soldier,
who spoke from a hospital bed, did turn out to be a serving Russian
officer it would support Kiev's accusations of direct Russian
military involvement in the separatist conflict.
 The Ukrainian military said on Sunday that the two Russian soldiers
had been captured during a battle with rebels at Shchastya, near
Luhansk, in which a Ukrainian soldier was killed.
Though a tenuous ceasefire declared last February stemmed
large-scale loss of life in a conflict in which more than 6,100
people have been killed, skirmishes have continued between
government forces and the separatists, with casualties on both
sides.
The soldier on the video, who gave his name as Alexander Alexandrov,
said his group was on a mission near the line of separation between
the warring sides "to carry out observation".
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"We were discovered. I was wounded in the leg as I tried to get
away. There were 14 members in the group. We've been here 4-5 days,"
he said on the video.
Apart from the Ukrainian soldier killed near Shchastya, two other
Ukrainians were killed at the weekend as a result of a mortar attack
near the town of Svitlodarsk, northeast of separatist-controlled
Donetsk.
(Reporting by Natalya Zinets and Pavel Polityuk; Writing By Richard
Balmforth)
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