Our overnight wrap-up from the newsroom:
President Petro Poroshenko says Ukraine is ready to accept a humanitarian mission to the separatist-controlled city of Luhansk, but only if it is an unarmed international team entering the country through Kyiv-controlled border checkpoints.
Poroshenko’s office said on August 9 that the president made the comments in a phone conversation with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Poroshenko said he was in discussions with Red Cross President Peter Maurer over such a possible mission.
Kyiv earlier said it prevented a Russian attempt to send troops across the border under the guise of a humanitarian mission.
Valeriy Chaliy, deputy head of President Petro Poroshenko's office said late on August 8, "A huge convoy moved towards the Ukrainian border, accompanied by Russian troops and military hardware."
He said that the action "was meant to enter apparently in order to provoke a full-scale conflict."
Chaliy said the move was averted through diplomatic channels, without going into details.
He added that the Red Cross denied that Russia had coordinated this alleged humanitarian column with them.
Chaliy said Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, who assured him that the Russian attempts at the border "will be stopped."
Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations, saying "We have difficulty understanding what the Ukrainians are talking about."
Peskov insisted that Russian troops “made no attempt” to enter Ukraine.
The Defense Ministry described the Ukrainian report as a "fairy tale."
The West has long warned that Russia's build-up of troops on the border with eastern Ukraine, where government troops are battling pro-Russian separatists, could see Moscow invade its troubled neighbor.
U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed the crisis on August 9 and said tougher sanctions should be imposed on Russia if it sends troops into Ukraine, according to a statement from Cameron's office.
The White House said that during a call, Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that any Russian intervention in Ukraine would “provoke additional consequences."
Russia's Foreign Ministry said that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to seek U.S. support for a humanitarian mission in southeastern Ukraine.
Lavrov said such a mission is needed because of large civilian casualties in the area he blamed on "the escalation by Kyiv of its army operation."
Also August 9, pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk said they were ready for a cease-fire with the Ukrainian government to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe."
Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk people's republic, said the area is surrounded by Ukrainian government forces.
In a statement, he warned that the city of Donetsk faced a lack of food, water, and electricity, adding that the rebels were ready to defend it.
Meanwhile, Donetsk city council spokesman Maxim Rovinsky said some 2,000 residential buildings were now without electricity.
With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, and ITAR-TASS
That concludes our live blogging for Saturday, August 9. Follow our coverage of Ukraine and other countries in RFE/RL's broadcast region HERE.
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There has been no confirmation from the U.S. side, as far as we know.
"Kommersant" quotes the Russian Investigative Committee as saying that the five Ukrainian soldiers it accused of possible "war crimes" and requested be held in pretrial custody have been released based on "the principles of humanity."
A Rostov regional court yesterday had ordered the five -- including a battalion commander and other officers -- to be held for two months.
They are all said to be among the several hundred Ukrainian troops who crossed the border into Russia under unclear circumstances -- with Moscow suggesting they defected and Kyiv saying they were fleeing pro-Russian shelling.
The Russian investigators had suggested the five men were culpable for ordering shelling of Ukrainian towns in the Luhansk region.
It appears that all those Ukrainian troops remain in Russia.
AFP quotes the National Security and Defense Council's spokesman as saying that 13 Ukrainian troops have been killed in the past day in fighting against separatist forces in the east.